Make no mistake, the seven (7) straight quarters of fiscal loss and utter implosion of California’s legal cannabis industry was long anticipated by the state’s operators and advocates.

The whopping 18.8% fiscal loss in Q1 2023, the cascading major operator failures like Herbl and recently reported Grassdoor, the massive job losses, these were all not just foreseeable; industry operators threatened this exact result for years. While the industry pleaded for urgent substantive changes, government leaders busied themselves with refining the font size on package labeling and the like.

Truthfully, while the legal cannabis industry is failing, the illegal cannabis industry is not. Where do our legislators think all that lost fiscal revenue is going? Consumers are simply not willing to pay 150% more for goods that are regulated to enjoy the manufactured apparition of safety. However, 30% – 50% more, they very likely will.

Here’s the harsh truth for governments seeking to legalize cannabis: the cannabis industry doesn’t need government; it’s the other way around. Government lost the drug war; it’s losing the alternative solution if it doesn’t adjust strategy.

Gary Becker, a pioneering 20th century economist who famously extended economics theory to social problems, wrote in the late 1960s that he did not “sympathize with the assumption that criminals had radically different motivations than everyone else.” If not the operators of California’s quasi-legal medical marijuana movement, who did our politicians and regulators think would lead our state’s experiment with legal cannabis?

An entire industry was literally handed to Sacramento on a platter; all they had to do was encourage participation.

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If you’re an owner operator, or have a struggling enterprise in your investment portfolio, let’s discuss how I can help. Send me a message or schedule a conference call on my Contacts page.

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ecause of its geopolitical value at the silk road gateway of Iran, Central Asia and India, the region of modern Afghanistan has historically been a conquest target. Empire after empire have literally broken themselves trying to seize this region, earning Afghanistan the ominous nickname, the “Graveyard of Empires.” While scholars debate nuances of why the region confounds conquest, few disagree a prime cause is the arrogance of foreigners failing to fully appreciate the difficult terrain and complex tribal factions.

I’m sorry to say to all you ambitious entrepreneurs and investors, but Cannabis may be your Afghanistan. I understand, it may be too difficult to ignore the boom of the cannabis markets world-wide, or the seemingly unstoppable march of global legalization, or the eye-popping financial projections or sheer volume of raw opportunities these early days offer. But I’m here to tell you, there’s hordes of cannabis tribesmen who will watch your attack helicopter explode against a craggy mountainside and then just go back to goat herding because they’ve seen it happen so many times before.

So, I thought perhaps some pointers might be valuable to reduce the carnage of those new to the industry.

The first pointer is cannabis doesn’t need you. Cannabis is not a shiny new industry in need of salvation by traditional industry professionals. Far, far from it. The fact is that a highly complex cannabis supply chain and culture already exists in every community. How do I know? Because despite the most aggressive state sponsored war on drugs in human history – the cannabis supply chain in every community is thriving. Can you make it better? Yes, but my advice would be don’t go rearranging the furniture until you know who owns the house.

The second pointer is that a simple business strategy is not a stupid business strategy. I’m reminded of the famous urban legend of the U.S. spending millions on developing a zero gravity pressurized pen for space travel while the Russians went ahead with a lead pencil. Grow clean quality plants, process them well, package and brand them well and get them to market. Keep it simple — it might be too early for your pressurized space pen.

The third pointer is cannabis is the crappiest get-rich-quick scheme in history. Be ready to invest years of intense hard work, frustration, fear and humiliation into your plan. Cannabis is intensely political, fast moving and difficult to anticipate. Nobody exits without scars. Wear ‘em. It’s the badge of creating an entire industry from scratch. But if you’re uncomfortable with getting up from multiple failures, best to go shopping in a different aisle — cannabis might be too uncertain for you.

Finally, cannabis is a painfully small world and chattier than the lunchroom in junior high school. Remember you are not just developing relationships, you are developing a reputation in an industry where for most of its history, reputation spelled the difference between life or death, freedom or incarceration. Comport yourself accordingly. It may seem that no one is looking, but it’s far from the fact.

#bloggingtips #WixBlog

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“Cannabis professional” not an oxymoron. There’s perhaps no other industry in modern history that is so multi-faceted, requiring some level of knowledge or expertise across so many different disciplines. After all, we are creating an entire industry from one end of the supply chain to the other, entirely from scratch. From the agricultural issues of cultivation to the engineering aspects of manufacturing to the legal and regulatory requirements surrounding local consumer shops, cannabis requires the business acumen so common in more traditional industries

According to ArcView Market Research, the cannabis industry will employ well over 400,000 people in the US by 2021. By conservative estimates, there are already 211,000 cannabis jobs across the United States now, of which 64,000 were added just in 2018. As more states legalize cannabis, employment needs and opportunities will grow exponentially.

Having witnessed the modern evolution of this industry first hand, I think it’s time parents, universities and society as a whole embrace the cannabis business as a legitimate career path. There are so many opportunities in the cannabis industry for young, motivated, bright minds. While the regulatory requirements in this industry are burdensome, they change constantly so it’s never “too late” to get an early start in this burgeoning industry.

Cannabis is a big opportunity for young adults to get into a growing, dynamic field and learn so much about so many different industries. Cannabis is a stimulating learning environment because it touches on so many different aspects of business — legal, political, regulatory, financial, retail, agricultural, industrial, etc — that it’s kind of the liberal arts of business. The opportunity to see how all of these disciplines interact makes cannabis ideal for all those young adults who “don’t know what they want to be when they grow up.” They can dip a toe in and be exposed to a broad spectrum of businesses.

At my company, we’ve created a formal management training program that takes employees through different business units from cultivation to manufacturing to retail and more. They’re learning the basics of the cannabis business along with gaining skills in finance, customer service, manufacturing, sales and marketing. The skills they learn assist them in developing into “cannabis professionals” but are also transferable to other industries.

Colleges and universities recognize the potential of careers in cannabis. Many are developing curriculums and majors built around the industry. In recent years, we’ve seen wine industry classes take off and I expect the numbers of students enrolled in these new cannabis programs to soar, not because of the stoner culture, but because of the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of what is already a multi-billion dollar industry with international scope.

Lack of experience isn’t much of a barrier to students wanting to get a foot in the door in cannabis. Legalization is so recent that very few people have much real experience in the legal cannabis industry. Everyone is learning together.

Perhaps not since Silicon Valley has an industry been so ripe for entrepreneurism. Cannabis has become the industry it is today primarily because of entrepreneurs who refused to quit in their unwavering desire to provide the public with access to this medicine. The earliest entrepreneurs were the people who grew their own plants and look at where we are today in cultivation as an industry.

As parents, educators and business owners, let’s legitimize cannabis as a serious career path for those eager to learn and join such a dynamic industry. It’s time to put the stigma of the product behind us and appreciate the impact cannabis is, and will, have on our economy.

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“To a hammer, everything’s a nail,” goes the saying. The problem with deep focus on a subject is that everything starts to filter through that lens. On the upside however, is that unexpected connections arise that before weren’t immediately obvious.

Such was the case at the end of June 2017 when 50 or so agriculture technology evangelists from around the world walked off the Forbes Ag Tech Summit tour bus onto Grupo Flor’s cannabis production facilities near Salinas, California. The Forbes Ag Tech Summit is an invitation only event bringing together more than 600 of the most entrepreneurial minds in agriculture to tackle the global food production crisis. The City of Salinas sponsors this summit in hopes of marking itself the epicenter of thought leadership on this critical and expanding subject.

Grupo Flor, a Salinas based cannabis enterprise of which I am a founder, chose this site because it gave attendees a unique opportunity to tour the entire cannabis wholesale supply chain at one site, from nursery and bloom, to processing and extraction, and finally packaging and distribution. Grupo Flor’s attendees, from far-off places like Japan and Poland, were about to get first hand exposure to processes that easily 90% of California legislators have never witnessed; but that’s a complaint for another blog.

“Yes, that’s correct” Mark said, in matter of fact way, wearing a surfer t-shirt and standing in front of an indoor field of stout plants, trichomes glistening, “we recycle 100% of our water; we use the same water 4-7 times before we replenish.” It was little flourishes like this that amazed the attendees, who knew not what to expect, but clearly not detailed attention to sustainability and energy conservation. I’m not exaggerating when I say that after the Grupo Flor tour, cannabis was the belle of the Forbes Ag Tech ball; however, the “why” might surprise.

You see, agriculture works on amazingly small margins, making it extremely difficult to deploy new technologies desperately needed in food production. Black market cannabis on the other hand, enjoys massive margins, but these fat margins actually retard the need for innovation. Enter regulated cannabis, threatening fat black market margins with taxes, regulations and defined competition. To my surprise, what Grupo Flor’s attendees saw was not just a crop inviting innovation, but actually a crop maybe having enough margin to encourage adoption.

And there’s the unexpected connection, cannabis offers ag tech entrepreneurs a novel opportunity to deploy innovations critical to global food crisis management. While some saw the Salinas sponsored Summit as little more than a political boondoggle, fostering creativity and unexpected results is not math, it’s risk calculus. Risk calculus is what makes California a top 6 global economy; it’s what enacted Prop 215 and it’s what undergirds our state’s new experiment with regulated cannabis. Is it too much to imagine that in some strange way, regulated cannabis can actually improve our world in ways not immediately obvious today?

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