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[Music] hey everyone for trick homes.com i'm ashley manning and this is careers in cannabis on this show we sit down with staffing agencies cannabis companies and other industry professionals to discuss employment opportunities in the burgeoning cannabis industry today's guest is a marine corps veteran former cage fighter and according to his linkedin profile he states he's bridging the gap between the phong and the boardroom on today's episode we talk with brett puffenbarger about his first career in cannabis as the general manager to florida's first cannabis dispensary to co-founding good ideas which is home to the project mongoose movement for cannabis and hemp professionals to help clean up the cultural and ethical issues surrounding our industry hey brett welcome to the show hey thanks for having me it's great to have you here i know i've been following all your linkedin posts and get me excited and get me uh anxious at the same time but all moving forward i'm happy to have you here today i know you've been pretty popular getting on podcasts so i hope we can make this one a great one for you uh i always like to start with a personal check-in with you make sure you've been doing good through 2021 and keep my fingers crossed has that has that been going good for you yeah it's great it's uh the only thing that's weird is i'm in an office and i have a personal rule that i don't take meetings and offices if i can help it i try to go on a walk or somewhere so it's kind of interesting to be sitting down and talking to someone on a video chat for once i absolutely agree it's hard to get that balance you know when you live in your house and that's your office and you suddenly now you're your space of where you shut off and try to try to gain some insights and clarity and has now become your work zone so i i fully relate to that and appreciate you being here and in your office interview interviewing with us uh so let's just get let's get right into it let's start with what you were doing right before the cannabis industry that's it's always what i want to know is is where you were right before i was a harley salesman uh i mean to be completely frank with it uh i was a director of business development for six dealerships at three states um but effectively biz dev for a different luxury product specifically harley and uh i think that's helped me with my move into cannabis to be very frank because it has such a culture like everybody knows harley when you say it it's like oh i know what the guy that buys a harley looks like i know the type of feel i know the culture uh but yeah that that was me uh prior to that and i mean before that i was in the military and i owned a karate school somewhere in the middle of that so well that makes perfect sense it was actually one of my thoughts before interviewing you is like wow it's you work for harley davidson that's a lifestyle and a culture this cannabis is a lifestyle and a culture and you're bridging those two together and bringing those experiences so working for harley davidson at what point were you like i went out i'm done with this and cannabis is that what happened you know i i feel like most people are afraid to admit something like this but i got fired um and i got fired because of weed um so like i didn't touch cannabis until i was 20 26 years old i got in a fight with my now ex and she was like i heard veterans do great when they smoke weed and i'm i'm the kind of person was like you know what i'm gonna and then it ended up being uh like long story short on it a guy knocked a bike off of a trailer and they p-tested the whole shift uh and i got you know walking papers and i was lucky enough that cannabis had just become legal here and the industry was kind of starting to kick up so there was a a need for someone that was willing to jump in and i think back then there was it was less of a destination industry like it is now like right now it's like cool and fun to jump into cannabis then it was like oh you want to shoot yourself in the foot for the rest of your career have fun go do it uh and i chose to do it anyways you did you chose to take that risk uh that's probably the marine in you [Laughter] there they're more risk there's there's more reward i think it's the opposite of what some people say more risk less reward or vice versa however the saying goes but um so you were fired from harley-davidson no i've been fired too no shame in that um it's traditionally not our fault but so you you went on in uh how did that lead into a role in cannabis and what was that first rule so my very first role was the general manager for this first dispensary in florida so i always get to have like that one little feather in my cap that i opened the first one and i made the first over-the-counter sale i still remember the girl to this day she was like uh not what you would expect for a medical you know a highly recommended medical station like 21 years old college kid like a very cool experience um and truth be told i kind of took the proactive approach before it was what is kind of common of like go get an industry certification and then apply for a job and that's literally what i did like there was this very first like i saw a billboard on the side of the road here in orlando and it was like first on campus cannabis college free for veterans and i said wait a minute here i'm a veteran i like free and i want to learn about weed let's do this thing so i signed up and i did uh i did their like blood tinder basic course like hey learn how to speak weed and then i did their general managers like this is how a dispensary runs and having been at like the bdc level in harley it wasn't that big of a shock and i don't know if the average person probably realizes this but harley makes just as much money selling t-shirts and hats as they do motorcycles if not more so the average harley dealership is is in effect sort of a car dealership but really it's an apparel store that sells cars or motorcycles on the side you know what i mean rather than right what most people think of so i went directly in the retail route and went hey me uh did you know kind of the the standard job interview thing and that was it i was like figure it out and did you and did you enjoy that job was absolutely be real what was it that you didn't like it seems like a tough task to ask someone uh to open up the first dispensary in a state when you know you're not around other stores who have done it so there's no copy and paste model for you how how i mean i know kind of what's coming because we talked about what we're going to talk about on the show there's actually a really good segue in this and anybody listening we didn't pre-plan it to go this way but like it was kind of my first experience of the grass attracting the snakes you know what i mean it was my first thing where i kind of sat back and i went this isn't quite right like there's some fishy things going on in here there's not things aren't playing out the way you would expect them to give in the amount of scrutiny we were under were the very first ones you know what i mean there's two companies doing it at the time there's 25 employees in the whole state and everybody's staring at us uh license zero zero one yeah basically first first mistake there i think technically we were the second license but they all gave them out in like the same day so it's kind of like when twins say i'm the older twin it's like yeah by eight minutes like we get it like gotcha yeah and i went from that uh to the nonprofit world um i ran a veterans charity uh for a little bit i was the pr director and then served as the interim ceo um we specialize in getting veterans their cannabis cards for free uh so we like covered the doctor's appointments and then we partnered with another charity who covered the state fee like the 75 extortion price that you have to pay just to be able to medicate without dying you know what i mean yeah but we that was our whole gig and that was really great and i loved it um but i think anybody who's ever worked in the nonprofit world knows that either you're beholden to profits you know the language of the 21st century america is profits and in a non-profit you're kind of stuck um right to make that super long story super short i worked heavily on a couple of political campaigns focused around cannabis and not necessarily ballot initiatives but getting pro-cannabis people elected there was a lot of thought that a certain group of us were going to end up being part of the department of cannabis and when that didn't work out and probably my second big moment of the grass attracting snakes and kind of you know like uh if i haven't said it before i'm a little bit dense and i take more than one sign to pick up on this thing so i'm sure there's plenty of people who have come into cannabis and realized it real fast and went the other way or figured out how to not keep running into them i didn't i just jumped right in the snake in without realizing it wow so that in turn led me to my first pivot and my first cannabis entrepreneurial endeavor so i founded a company along with a couple of other people called native hemp solutions uh that ended up i i sold my shares out and got out of that after a little bit um they were going in a little bit a direction that i didn't understand and then uh found myself a vanguard scientific did that for a little bit and then now we're here so if we want to fast forward all the way to today hey i found something again absolutely uh there was one thing i wanted wanted to touch base on um because i found it fascinating i think it's fascinating information for the world to hear as well and that was uh when you were the project spokesperson for the environmental bioremediation initiative yeah so i found it called jump for water uh okay and it's still actively going on my buddy steve edmunds still runs it um he's kind of one of the og hemp guys here in florida he's been pounding the pavement for trying to do the industrial legalization side since probably before either you or i were born if we really want to call it like it is and i'm not calling him old but you know uh oh oh gee we'll just comment yes super og um so that whole concept is really really simple and i'm no scientist and i'm definitely not a cultivator but i understand some basics of it and uh cannabis and hemp regardless of what we want to call it it really likes nitrogen and phosphorus and if you kind of take that idea and you look at some of the problems and waterways that we see all over the world but specifically here in florida tennessee and michigan where we first kind of looked at it so the bogs in michigan some of these back backwater tennessee kind of stagnant water things and then something like lake okeechobee you take the hemp and you grow it on a floating mat with no care so we're just picking the seeds and growing them in a little clay ball and a floating mat and eventually the roots can clean the water so it's like kind of silly and you go wait a minute here but what and again i'm no expert but like that's what cattails do like when people plant them intentionally in their retention ponds that's why wow [ __ ] does it a lot better i find that just incredibly fascinating another fact fun fact too for adding hemp onto the list of ways that can help and save our environment so if you want to talk about a really fun one my new favorite one that i've learned is using it as a rotation crop so figure take your corn farmer your soy farmer your cotton farmer the guy who's not they only grow one maybe two crops a year depending on their geographical location half of the year that farm is doing nothing well let's throw some seeds in there and figure it out especially if we're talking industrial because i'm obviously not talking human consumption cbd like highly regulated inside grows that we would expect but if we're making hemp cream who cares and there's that whole fun added benefit of hemp heals earth full stop like weed fixes the planet when other plants destroy it i'm i'm not gonna get super into it but like if we're just gonna put a point there that's a thing and that's coming and it's gonna be coming more and more often so very exciting insight on that uh i wanted to make sure it got out there so people understand farmers need a business plan brett poffenberger just shared you a business plan that can help generate some revenue for you right i mean it's not gonna make you rich like a lot of these you know broker joker types will tell you oh jumping cannabis grow my seeds i'll buy it for me right now we'll give it to an extract now but isn't it is it a potential boost in revenue is it a potential at the very least to make money on something that's over there otherwise sitting down and doing nothing yup now awesome thank you for for sharing a little bit of that insight on on what you were working on as their project spokesperson so fast forward to today i know from the time we talked before till now you have founded a company you co-founded a company yeah tell me more right so it kind of all started for lack of a better term between a friend of mine alex uh my wife and our now business partner jody and myself sitting back and realizing and having conversations that have nothing to do with business development had nothing to do with anything other than when you work in the cannabis industry and you work in the cannabis industry at a certain level your friends end up being other people that do that you know what i mean so we were so nice we were having these conversations where it was like oh let me tell you about my horrible story in cannabis oh let me tell you my horrible story and we kind of realized as as bad as it as it makes us sound as an industry it was damn near all pervasive and so what we started doing because we're those kind of edgy contrarian people that don't really care like i'm the guy that goes yeah i got the same credentials as you do and i think you're wrong anyways we kind of started it as a hashtag and it took off a little faster than we anticipated we started seeing more and more people talking about it we started getting more messages of bro let me tell you about xyz guy in colorado yeah that's not unique though calling out the misbehavior of the industry isn't unique i mean let's give credit where credit's due there's been the blacklist there's been this and that for the last 10 years since before i was in the industry even you know what i mean right and i'm not some genius super guy but i realized that that was only the half the equation you know what i mean like it's one thing to call out the misbehavior i mean we're missing the other side of that absolutely and that is returning on that the other thing we kind of sat back and we realized through conversations is that we have two interesting disparities going on we have a lot of major cannabis companies have cut the fat and the people they cut are not their people they're the people who actually built the company they're the people who actually ran the extraction labs who actually ran the cultivation rooms or actually did this and what we realized is some of the most talented people in cannabis are now in the open market because they weren't appreciated by the very people we're calling out in the stories on the other side of that there's an entire business class of people that are interested in cannabis that have watched what happened they watched all the snakes chew up the first round of investment run it into the ground and put it in their pocket we can see that with the recent news about you know canadians cannabis ceos literally cutting half their company and doubling their salary every year what so i think there's kind of been this kind of going idea that the capital dried up in cannabis and we said no it didn't it got smarter and it doesn't want to get taken advantage of so basically by kind of taking this first stake and going grass attracts snakes this is project mongoose i'm ballsy enough to say that i don't want to work with somebody that doesn't agree with these tenants you know what i mean like if you can sit back and tell me that you agree with all of these we're not playing and i don't want to play with you i don't care if you're the biggest guy in the room i don't care if you've got all the money in the world i'd rather take 10 bucks from somebody i agree with and struggle together then i would take 10 million from some guy that just wants to turn a profit and ruin the industry so we kind of sat there with that and realized we have a whole bunch of talented people and then on top of that the ones who aren't sitting there on the sidelines have gone out and created their own successful companies but something we learned from talking to those guys i mean gals sorry uh but from something again i'm talking to them is every one of their clients wanted something they didn't offer so whether they're a website guy uh and that's what they do their clients that wanted a website like well now i need extraction equipment what do i do or that girl that does the cultivation stuff and helps them set up the grow lights and the build well her client asked well how do i market this now that i'm growing it and so what we figured out is is that if we can stake the moral claim and then step back and go everybody that's attracted to the light let's cross-pollinate let's work together let's be for lack of a better term the consultant's consultant or let's be the dot connector but only amongst those who fit the criteria and have self declared and we've kind of done this and you see it all day on linkedin in a very contrarian way of like hey i see you and if you speak up you're only making yourself look bad and thus far it's gained a ridiculous amount of traction so to kind of break that down without being super long-winded because i know i've been sitting here talking for like a minute and a half straight without barely taking a breath this this is your show this is your this is your space uh so we're staking the claim with project mongoose uh the shortest way to make that make sense is have you ever seen the book adventure deals i have not ventured is this really great book about learning how the venture capital world works and it's basically two venture capitalist an entrepreneur and a lawyer sat down and they said am i allowed to curse on this show absolutely okay so they basically venture capitalist a lawyer and an entrepreneur sat down and said man our industry is full of [ __ ] here's a book on everything we talk about here's the crib sheet on our language here's what makes this make sense here's the mentality behind it here's the overlaying expertise that you would need to know in these scenarios it was basically a crib sheet of welcome to our very complicated world i'm gonna let you in on the tricks and the [ __ ] that they're doing before you get involved right so that's kind of where this came from so what we've done is project mongoose is putting together an advisory board i've got some really cool people lined up for it i don't want to throw them out there quite yet because that'll spoil all the announcements for the next couple weeks marketing plan but all right the idea being that project mongoose allows us to set set this standard and provide insight from real experts so what we're doing is we're taking in stories any and all horror stories from any segment of the industry uh send them our way grassytricksnakes.com real simple to remember easy to find um that's the hashtag too right yep and it's the hashtag floating around uh any stories that come in there we're probably gonna end up calling the person we're gonna have a full conversation we can keep them anonymous but the idea is is that we're gonna put these stories out there with the expertise laid over it in footnotes and commentary so that they go from being not just stories and not just warnings but allegories of how to do better allegories of how we can train people how to do this better and then to bring in that second step so we have train higher culture that's simple we're gonna come in we're gonna do some mild assessments and then we're gonna go grab the advisory board people that fit best and plug them in and we're not talking this like uh [ __ ] pay-to-play industry associate no all of that's crooked too i'm going to be doing more and more calling of them out so no get rid of that we're legitimately just working together and we're working together because we share a moral fiber and because we're an industry that should have been built on advocacy and created through activism and we had a choice and we failed miserably at that choice we have the legacy guys and we have whatever you want to call them the chads the business class of people one side should have been the heart and the other should have been the brain and somehow we didn't get either of either we got a little bit of heart from the chads and we got a little bit of brain from the legacy instead of a whole lot you get where i'm going with that yep absolutely uh so then the final kind of piece to this puzzle uh is not only do we want the stories we want to help the good people find the good people to work for i'm not talking about staffing or recruiting or any of that i'm talking about legitimately let's do this together let's build a community so that we can be cross-pollinating like that with the entire idea that the only service i really care about other than connecting people is vetting the people we work for or work with and i think my my little final piece to that whole long rambling thing about what we're doing is that it takes a lot more than a fancy pitch deck a couple of connections and a nice cap sheet to be worth investing in you're not going to learn everything about somebody by asking two or three references that they provided you and a background check it's going to take a whole lot more than that and i think that that's a key thing if we're going to help the new transplants to the industry or going to help the people who've already been chewed up and spit out if we're going to help any of that it's going to kind of start with that byline of like you got to learn how to call out the [ __ ] and you gotta learn how to help others do it too or else we're gonna keep watching it happen over and over and over in new states and eventually in new countries it's true that is 100 accurate i am excited for what you guys are bringing forward because there's good and the bad you know some people there's you can focus in on on all the bad and in any industry and focus in on the good i think helps highlight them but you guys talking to these companies that are being called out smart idea you know i hope they get back to you too i know no one likes to be called out but if they want to protect you know if they want to protect what their name is and what they stand for they're going to want to take that phone call i think because something that's different or the thing that's really changed for this is that the things like the blacklist or the other kind of uh legacy version of calling them out they could easily dismiss that and say who are you what are you you don't look like me you don't talk like me you've never done this because it's usually by and large the legacy market calling out the chad market and we don't want to be like that i'm okay with calling out both sides and i'm okay with supporting both sides because i think they both have a place i think it's about finding where those two meet in the right way yeah they'll definitely meet they're getting there for sure i think uh you said it spot on got the heart on one side and the brain's on the other and there's nothing connecting those two so looking forward to what good ideas brings to the table is project mongoose one of several projects or the start yeah project that's gonna kind of be uh the beacon that allows us to be that moral standing um so we've got two other officially announced projects that are getting built out right now so we've got train higher culture thc funny okay so the idea there being you can't fix any of this if you don't go at the top so we're talking about doing cultural curves secret shopping and executive coaching with that so basically like hey let's go ahead and open the door with project mongoose let's call you out and now let's have a conversation because that whole idea is i'm not the little guy anymore we're the same as you man i've been in the same shoes you have run the exact same operation for a long time and did pretty darn good at it let me help you do better so that's one the other side of that is canna convert which is baseline advisory services for companies and investors looking to come in the industry uh so like are you interested in cannabis but you don't know where you get to start let's give you the crib sheet let's get you vetted with the right people let's get you pointed in the right direction because we all know we could tie it back grasp the tracks look out and then the other side of that two would be individuals so again not looking to be a recruiter never going to do that but i do want to help find these people a home and i do want to help them transplant again in the right way because the grass attracts snakes and then yeah i've got one more kind of super fun secret project that we have not announced the name of but i'll let you have like the sneak preview idea of it um well thank you i think along the lines of the capital getting smarter and the operational requirements becoming more and more difficult in new states that manage services is going to be a big deal and it's going to be a really big deal coming soon and i think that a lot of these managed services could can and will be created using the cast offs that the idiots let go uh so i got a little plan to meld those two go ahead and give me you know the whole like give me your tired you're sick and you're hungry and i'll build an army i'd like to do that and i i think that's the next stage we haven't quite finished flushing that one out but but i'd like to take the opportunity to help the people who have been chewed up the hardest and the most affected by the snakes and the people who are most likely to get preyed on them and marry those together in a way where the new money coming in and the new people interested don't have to deal with the day in and day out chaos that we all do living here and some of us thrive and i'm not saying it's a bad thing some of it's yeah fun old cannabis chaos and some of it is the grass attracting snakes but i'd like to make those two things congeal into a real thing because i think we have a massive amount of talent and a massive amount of interest that need to be married up absolutely i was just talking with someone and said you know we dug the foundations i don't want to say myself because i'm only five years into this industry but the people who have been in it dug the hole need to come together with the people to put on that first floor of the house and it's scary as well to have someone put that first floor on your house because you're growing and they're coming in telling you you did put the fountain poured the concrete wrong here and you did you dug the whole wrong there the plumbing's messed up there and it's hard when you you've been doing this for you know sometimes 20 30 years that's the way you've been doing it and until those two can meet together that house is never going to be built um and it's hard to see that i want to see those those come together just like yourself i think a lot of people are going to learn from your stories because they with the the input the insights of your the people that are working for you to say this is what you should be doing in this situation because we all have these same stories and you don't have situations aren't going to stop either absolutely it's not gonna there is no culling the herd of the predatory green rush class that's come to cannabis absolutely but there is a good way to take the wind out of their sails for the good of everybody not just to make money but like hold your roll and let's teach you guys too because yes some of them don't know i'll be very frank i i think a lot of people who speak the way i do or say some of the use some of the slang i choose to use like the chad kind of flang i think a lot of people forget that they're people too and they only they don't know what they don't know and i don't think they're all bad are there some of them who are legitimately died in the wool snakey as snakey comes if you peel the first layer off there's another snake underneath yeah sure most of them probably don't even realize they're doing it and i think it would be as simple and as good as let's open up the conversation let's have a real talk and let me break it down for you because it's not meant as a condemnation and it's not meant as a finger pointing it's meant as a guy turning around with a flashlight and saying i've walked this path too and you're straying true very true so with all the talk of the snakes attracts the grass attracts snakes would that sound scary to someone who wants to have a career in cannabis they you know they know what they've been growing at home and they want a career in cannabis do you think that that could steer them away by hearing something like that or what would be some advice you want to give to those who want to get into the industry but are afraid of those snakes and there's lots of people out there who say the same thing because they've heard these stories as well from those in the industry so i i think i've got a two-part answer to that okay do i want to scare people off that would otherwise make amazing contributions to the community no but if me saying that scares them off they wouldn't make it here anyways and i don't mean to be callous about that but like it's true those of us who have been in the industry more than a couple of months have learned have learned that you know what i mean i think it doesn't go a couple of days on linkedin that i don't see some high caliber marketer or sales guy who thinks he was you know hot [ __ ] because he came from a big name company not unlike me you know what i mean and he goes i'm never coming back i'm out i'm out of the industry i'm not doing it and i see that pretty regularly so part of me is kind of like well if that bothers you then you're probably not going to make it but to me i'm not saying it with that intention that's just kind of the underlying subtext my intention with it is is that it should be a healthy warning to be cautious and to take a double look it's not not to do it it's not not to make the leap obviously i've made the leap and i've continued to try to take risks and make leaps in the industry it is to be aware again with that kind of thought of been there done that here's the path here's my flashlight don't step on that rock it's really a toad or whatever you want to call it you know or a snake right or both yeah what so what would be some advice for someone that wants to get in how could they go about finding who these companies are this has been an ongoing conversation i have with several people what's the best source for someone who has the credentials to be in this industry they just need to get in do it it's that simple plug away at doing it i'll be very frank linkedin is probably the greatest place on the entire planet for canada business right now because one all of us who have been running social media pages or companies in the cannabis space for a couple of years know that the other 11 teen social media sites hate us with the exception of maybe clubhouse which is exciting but i'm not an iphone guy so i don't have it well i'm debating on buying an ipad just for it but still with the exception of maybe tick tock and uh clubhouse linkedin's the only place we can go and it just so happens to be that it's a little bit easier on linkedin than anywhere else because one it's a content deprived format meaning that less percentages of people who participate in linkedin are posting than they do on the average site right so most people are lurkers on linkedin fun fact number one fun fact number two it's the world without gatekeepers you could go find a cannabis ceo right now you're talking to one but like you could find a hundred of us you could find ones that are ten times bigger than me bigger than i'll ever be and you could send them a message right now you could go record i had a guy yesterday or the day before send me a one minute youtube video view just like this of him saying yo dude this is what i want to do in cannabis and i'm not a cannabis packaging guy but i can do cool stuff can we talk we're talking i'm going to listen because it was creative you know what i mean yeah and i think that's something that happens on linkedin so i think that's one i think two is don't be afraid to stake the fact that you're coming to cannabis out there like don't put it out there because i think a lot of people don't want to be in cannabis until they're in cannabis you know what i mean like i don't want to say i'm interested in a cannabis job till i get that vp role yeah buddy nobody in cannabis is going to bring you on unless we understand you speak our language and part of me would would normally say if we were in any other industry get some education on it first i'm not talking necessarily like a four-year degree or grad school like those are all great i didn't go to those things for cannabis i went to those things for other things you know what i mean but get some level of baseline certification in the industry so that we know that you talk our talk and speak our language i don't think anybody cares how great you are at a niche skill because unless it's cultivation all the rest of them are niche skills that have nothing to do with cannabis unless you speak the language right so let's use like a marketer for example i don't care how great of a marketer you are i don't care about your pay-per-click campaign i don't care about your ability to build a personal brand i don't care about any of that if you don't know what i say when i say man i went to the local mso and i grabbed a g a shatter and then i grabbed some you know what i mean like if you don't speak that language you're not gonna make it here and those are things that we're expecting our baseline people to know the bud or the trimmer the sales rep the entry-level guy has to know this [ __ ] so don't think you can make the transplant to a director or vice president or executive level without being able to do it but on the other side of that if you can speak that language we're a talent starved industry and we're growing in leaps and bounds from every sector i see just as many of those guys get they get chewed up and ran off from the industry because they can't handle it i see an exciting announcement at this company that company over here from tech consumer packaged goods uh medical field like you name it we're pulling the heavy hitters now because we're becoming a destination industry but we're gonna stop doing that if we continue to let the snakes run the show accurate do you think uh legalization you don't have to share your political point of view if you don't want to do you think legalization will increase the snakes or possibly cut the snakes out depends it depends on how we talk about legalization because i think there's a lot of very specific minutiae between decriminalization legalization and then types of legalizations are we talking horizontal marketing and home grow like uh oklahoma 2 500 bucks for a license figure it out open season and grow six plants at home a piece or 12 plants a home a piece that would be great i think that's a really good way to run the snakes out of the industry on the other side of that do you have florida where it's forced vertical integration 22 licenses 300 000 patients only 11 of them are actually producing products so it's basically shooting fish in a barrel with no incentive for anything no not at all that's terrible right here you know what i'm saying like so like depends it is the short answer and i think it all stems back to if we're gonna have a truly innovative industry and we're gonna make any sort of correlation to another industry i hate comparing us to alcohol for so many reasons but that's the only industry i can think of that came from a post-prohibition era to a current boom so what we see if we make that like parallel is there's an 84-year gap between the end of alcohol prohibition and the legalization of home brew in that time we only had six or eight major brewing companies in the world or in the united states you know what i mean pabst blue ribbon molten cores budweiser couple other smaller ones we're done the second they legalized homebrew you can't go to a city in america a major city 100 000 people or more without seeing three craft breweries a craft distillery and four steak restaurants that have their own special custom craft brew am i wrong we all know about the craft beer guy every guy knows the white dude with the beard and the beanie and the sweater is gonna drink his why dude the locally store that's a thing but i think that cannabis is going to and could follow that so if we get the ability at the end of the day for home grow and horizontal licensing meaning low barrier to entry to attempt because at the end of the day competition's gonna going to let that surpass and obviously money gives you a head start but when you pay 2500 for a license and you can experiment with it at home first you're gonna see real innovation real entrepreneurship and real domination from some really kick-ass craft stuff on the other side of that if we get the legalization like we see in florida or massachusetts or virginia where we have forced vertical integrated tiered licenses or even worse like virginia where they're forced vertically integrated tiered licenses with a set geographical area and one legal dispensary each you go what no that would never be sustainable so i think we're kind of at that crux where who knows how that's going to play out uh ideally if we end up with national legalization state by state can do it and you're going to see the states blow up that allow it why do you think california cannabis is kicking ass to everybody on the east coast because there's 7 000 more brands and i don't mean that figuratively i literally mean thousands and thousands of more brands doing thousands and thousands of more things and it the cream will rise to the top when you keep it lidded there is no cream there is no top it's just one barrel with one really big fish that's five guys that all know each other and act like they're in competition [Applause] sounds accurate well only time's gonna tell i think we're a few years away from any type of decision being made here and just i think there's a there's a lot going on economically and in society which cannabis can the industry can help with but i don't think anyone's actually taking us seriously and i think a little bit has to do with some of the snakes that are in it maybe they have a little bit the snakes also have something to do with legalization too oh i mean we see that right now in florida uh two of the largest multi-state operators put a million dollars sort of ballot initiative that would continue force vertical integration into adult use markets so the third most populous state in the country they're trying to buy their way into a forced vertical operated recreational market can you imagine being one of 22 licensed old and you can see that playing out in all kinds of weirdness so if i go to california right now and you tell me you have a small vertical operation with seven dispensaries you're worth like 30 or 40 million dollars it's not a huge amount yet that exact same operation just sold for 213 million dollars in florida wow there there's some fish there too with those snakes yeah there's something going on definitely for sure well you've been bringing some really valuable insights again and and we've covered a lot here today and i really want to make sure people take back what you have to say i think the people who are getting into the industry need to be very well aware of everything around them and what's going on with the companies they're working for and how they operate and who's also helping them who's also investing in that those companies as well if someone wants to take it up a notch you know they might not be directly involved in day-to-day operations but that person could be funding that company guess what the boss on top has to has to follow the person that's paying them to run their operation so yes we are definitely on to something i appreciate your mission is there anything that you would want anything else you'd want to share with anyone who is seeking a career in cannabis or is currently in cannabis and is trying their hardest to advance their role but there's the other people coming in helping to build that that first floor and the people that are in it are saying i've been here digging the foundations for this house and building the foundation i can't help with the first floor you know it's hard for people to get there together work together work together i'll say it one more time just so everybody gets it work together cannabis is a team sport full yeah and i think what we're trying to do at the end of the day is to continue to build the team like the avengers you know what i mean like uh i think a lot of what's happening that's wrong in corporate cannabis comes from toxic culture and i think toxic culture comes from dunning-kruger syndrome for lack of a better plan so you have a whole bunch of people who don't know what they're doing and they're just now realizing they don't know what they're doing and that the people underneath them actually do and they're intentionally making toxic cultures to save their jobs at the hurt or the detriment to the company yes i think the pawns of the chessboard right exactly so i think at the end of the day it's uh i'll be super cavalier and i think i say this 10 times a day on telephone calls but it all kind of started with a little bit of a punk rock song and it's like in a vast network of sharks and minnows why is it that we have yet to converge and stand up and take a stand against the sharks because you can't eat all the minnows at once if you outnumber them you know what i mean and i think it starts with the small and medium-sized ancillary service providers and the people who have been eaten up and spit out the other end of the snakes standing up and going hey wait a minute guys there's a whole bunch of us that actually know what's going on actually know how to run a business in cannabis and uh we can help you and that's what we're trying to do here is you know the whole idea is that all tides arise you know rising tides rise all ships or whatever that silly thing is um i think that applies more here than almost any other industry and if we really want to get super wax poetic with it it's like the whole bob marley thing you know what i mean the herb is the healing of the nation will start [ __ ] acting like it agree agree i love i love that and that end statement there so thank you so much brett for your time today i look forward to having you back on uh where can where can our listeners find good ideas good on all the social media as the good ideas um and then obviously find me on linkedin myself and alex popoff are pretty constantly taking the fight to the big guys as much as we can and trying to build our network there because i think it's the last major hyper growth platform out there so come find us there and let's let's uh start to talk i'm that guy who's uh 70 messages behind on my inbox but i've made it a personal mission that i will meet with every single person who messages me i don't care who uh kudos to you for staying true to your passion and congratulations on co-founding your company good ideas thank you all right thank you brett my thanks again to brett poffenburger for being my guest on today's episode you can follow our series careers in cannabis as well as more great shows like this one at trichomes.com if you remember the cannabis community and you have a story you want to share please reach out you can reach the show by emailing careers in cannabis at tricones.com please take a second to subscribe to the podcast write a review because it really really helps others to find the show you can also join in the discussion with industry insiders by visiting trichomes.com and following us on all social media for trichomes.com i'm ashley manning thank you for listening and be well