For many people, 2020 was an eye-opening year. Just ask Nicole Brown, founder and owner of Sage Decoded.
“When COVID-19 hit, I’d been a nurse for nearly 15 years and had experienced a lot of different things over the course of my career, but nothing like that,” she says. “I knew I wanted to do something different and 2020 seemed like the year to go in a new direction.”
With medical marijuana recently becoming legal in Virginia, Nicole also knew she had a unique opportunity to serve a growing population of patients and healthcare providers as they navigated this new treatment option.
“Most medical professionals — especially those who were trained prior to the 1990s — were taught that all ‘drugs’ are bad, so there’s this huge gap in knowledge surrounding the body system that regulates and is affected by medical marijuana,” she explains. “Healthcare providers and patients alike need to be educated on how to use cannabis products in a way that’s safe and effective. That’s how my business was born.”
The Sage Decoded Mission
As a medical cannabis patient herself, Nicole was able to combine her nursing background with her own personal experience — a pairing that makes her uniquely suited to help her clients.
“Because of the lack of education around medical cannabis, I had to learn a lot on my own, which wasn’t always easy,” Nicole says, admitting she definitely went through some trial and error when finding the right dosing to effectively treat her chronic anxiety symptoms. “By using my experience and my knowledge, I realized I could help people so they wouldn’t have to face those adverse reactions themselves.”
It’s with that mission in mind that Nicole is educating people on medical cannabis, a natural alternative to big pharma treatments that can be addictive and come with their fair share of side effects.
“I want people to know there are safe, effective treatments out there,” she says. “Medical cannabis is not just a fad, but an option that can really help when used the right way, under the right circumstances. My job is to educate and advocate for my clients so they can use cannabis appropriately to improve their quality of life.”
