Ganjapreneur, a website dedicated to cannabis business news and professional content, has announced the addition of a cannabis industry job listings section to its website. The job listings will be generated primarily via third-party platforms where cannabis growers, retailers, and ancillary businesses post their employment openings. Ganjapreneur’s stated goal is to provide one location for aspiring ganjapreneurs to see all of the industry job postings each day.
Ganjapreneur hopes to compile a comprehensive overview of the legal marijuana job market. With positions ranging from Budtender to Delivery Driver, the professional opportunities in the burgeoning cannabis industry are unique and can often by firercely competitive.
By publishing unique, in-depth content, a weekly newsletter, as well as extensive interviews with prominent marijuana professionals, Ganjapreneur’s primary goal is to keep its readers up to date on the latest developments and opportunities related to the cannabis industry. Last week, Ganjapreneur announced the first segment of an interview with Matt Brown, founder of Denver-based marijuana tourism company My 420 Tours. The interview was conducted via audio, and a transcription is available for reading on the Ganjapreneur website.
Ganjapreneur also recently announced the release of an open-source dictionary of marijuana slang terms which is open to public submissions. Cannabis enthusiasts are encouraged to submit their favorite “stoner slang terms” and phrases to be included in the open source dictionary.
A lot of successful entrepreneurs will tell you a major key to their success can be summed up in one word: niche. Yet the idea of specializing, of narrowing down your market to a small segment of customers uniquely interested in what you offer, might seem contradictory to starting a business when you want to reach as many people as possible.
As marijuana moves into the mainstream, new opportunities for specialization are presenting themselves. For instance, I’m writing for the media niche. When I told some friends I was writing an article for Ganjapreneur they were incredulous.
“A year ago you called it ‘indigo’ and thought sativa was an organic sweetener made from plants,” one of them said.
True enough.
But I’ve always supported the legalization of marijuana and the industry is no longer about stoners vs. the rest of the population. It’s about accepting pot as a lifestyle — medication at times — and a valid outlet of recreation for those who choose it. Sometimes an outsider can see things that players too close to the action miss.
If you’re an entrepreneur and the marijuana business is calling your name, it’s also about figuring out where you fit in. The piece “The Marijuana Industry is Creating These Economic Niches” gives a good overview of the various areas a new entrepreneur can explore including stocks, science and medicine, legal cultivation and extraction.
But even within these niche areas, you’ll want to find your USP — your unique selling point. In other words, what is the sweet spot you can offer that will keep your customers loyal for years to come? It’s not your market that will do this. It’s your niche.
Danny Iny at Firepole Marketing says your market is who can buy your product. Your niche is who will buy it. A lot of startups will probably not make it because they don’t understand this critical difference.
Having a niche doesn’t mean you can’t experiment or sell in other areas. It doesn’t mean you can’t change areas of specialization if your chosen idea doesn’t seem to be working out. A niche is a starting place. It’s somewhere to begin building a foundation of loyal followers, because ultimately that’s what is going to make or break your success.
But let’s go back to your USP. Suppose you want to focus on recreational marijuana. Who is your target audience? Baby Boomers or Millennials? If you’re targeting young professionals, this doesn’t mean your 70-year-old grandfather won’t find you using his smart phone, but it does mean you’ll probably be focusing on social media campaigns and skip the Grateful Dead décor. If you’re happier creating in the kitchen than any place in the world, you’d be a good fit for edibles or maybe extractions. These are all niches that fall under the bigger category of “recreation” which falls under the huge umbrella of the marijuana industry.
Top niche markets:
High-end concentrates: potent hash that can be “dabbed” with a high price tag attached
Vegan/organic cannabis: growing marijuana that doesn’t use bug byproducts (like worm castings) or chemicals
Discounted bulk purchases: being able to sell ounces (when applicable) at lower rates
Wide variety of edibles: appealing to non-smokers who prefer to eat their cannabis
Offering spa services: enticing women with a variety of wellness treatments
Specialization doesn’t mean limiting your success. It’s an opportunity to establish yourself as an industry expert, the go-to person, for your special corner of the industry. It’s an opportunity to build a strong foundation for your business to grow.
This week marks the opening of Connecticut’s medical marijuana market, nearly two years following the passage of a medical marijuana initiative that made Connecticut the 17th state to legalize cannabis for medicinal purposes.
The first crop of medicine was grown by Theraplant, the state’s first licensed producer, and was shipped to the state’s six licensed dispensaries on Monday. The Healing Corner, a dispensary in Bristol, and Arrow Alternative Care in Hartford were able to open their doors the very same day, securing legal and safe access to medical cannabis for dozens of patients.
Patients who had registered with the state were already granted protection against prosecution for marijuana, but the opening of official dispensaries was a long-anticipated and much-needed development. Now, patients will face less stigma when buying their medicine, and the marijuana they have access to will be more consistent in quality and subject to a swath of testing as per state regulations.
“I don’t have to hide something that helps me,” said Daniel Gaita, a veteran who suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome as a result of several overseas tours of military duty. “It will enable me to treat my symptoms without feeling like a criminal.”
As of the market’s opening, medicine is available in 5, 10, 15, and 35 gram doses. There are also pre-rolled joints available, and a unique marijuana concentrate tab that can be smoked or used in certain vaporizers. Eventually, patients will also have access to oils, tinctures, and baked goods. Cannabis-infused beverages and candies, however, are not allowed under state law.
“Smokables are going to be available first, but remember these smokables can also be vaporized,” explained Angelo DeFazio, owner of Arrow Alternative Care. “We believe in vaporization. It’s a better route of administration for the patient. It gets more of a dose to the patient quicker.”
There are currently 2,326 patients registered with the state, but industry members are counting on that number growing significantly — in fact, some experts estimate Connecticut’s potential medical marijuana customer base to be between 35,000 and 70,000, or 1-2% of the state’s 3.5 million residents.
Connecticut patients can qualify for medical marijuana to treat the following conditions: PTSD, glaucoma, cancer, HIV or AIDS, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, certain spinal cord injuries, epilepsy, cachexia, wasting syndrome, and Crohn’s disease. Patients can be certified by doctors to receive no more than 70 grams, or 2.5 ounces, per month.
The Washington State Liquor Control Board is warning dozens of individuals currently stalling the completion of their retail marijuana licensing process that their unfinished applications are now in jeopardy. In total, the WSLCB has sent letters to 56 different businesses, giving them 60 days to schedule an interview with a licensing inspector. Failure to comply will mean forfeiting one’s spot in the lottery.
Many of these businesses scored lucky numbers in the lottery for retail licenses earlier this year, but have failed to move forward in the licensing process since then. “A lot of people thought they’d be able to sell their license – they’d win the lottery and they’d sell it to the highest bidder,” said Becky Smith, the WSLCB’s marijuana licensing manager. “People were surprised they couldn’t sell their license until they actually got licensed.”
Though 57 licenses have been issued by the WSLCB (as of the beginning of this month), only 32 recreational marijuana stores have actually opened their doors to the public thus far in Washington. In the city of Seattle, which was originally slated to receive 21 licenses for retail marijuana stores, only one store is currently open for business.
Meanwhile, the WSLCB has been working to issue the licenses necessary to growing the state’s marijuana market, but laziness, disinterest, or simply the inability to proceed financially on the part of some would-be pot shops continues to slow the process. By shutting down the applications that will not be pursued any further, the board will be opening up some highly-coveted slots for applicants who scored lower in the lottery rankings.
In addition to scheduling an interview, the businesses in question must also provide any information necessary for proceeding with criminal and financial background checks. “They need to set up an interview and have a place they’re going to operate,” Smith said. “It’s time to provide us with names — who are their financiers, who are their true parties of interest.”
KING 5 reports:
“Five applicants in Seattle were receiving the board’s letters this week. Seven letters were going out in unincorporated King County, five in Snohomish County, and two each in Spokane, Yakima, Walla Walla and Vancouver. No letters were issued in any of the dozens of cities and counties that have adopted temporary or permanent bans on marijuana businesses.”
Recent reports indicate that $14 million has been earned through retail marijuana sales in Washington since the market opened on July 8th, with $3.5 million in tax revenue going directly to the state.
Alaska news channel KTVA experienced a shocking revelation last night on live television, when reporter Charlo Greene — after detailing a medical marijuana organization called the Alaska Cannabis Club — admitted that she was in fact the owner of said club. Greene quickly cut to the point: like a true activist, she was quitting her job at the station to dedicate all of her energy to seeing Alaska’s legalization initiative pass in the upcoming election.
The exact wording of our hero’s resignation is indeed explicit, so consider yourself warned:
“Now, everything you’ve heard is why I — the actual owner of the Alaska Cannabis Club — will be dedicating all of my energy toward fighting for freedom and fairness, which begins with legalizing marijuana here in Alaska. And as for this job, well, not that I have a choice, but — fuck it, I quit.”
Hours after her dramatic display, Greene posted an Indiegogo campaign that provides more information regarding her decision to leave KTVA. The campaign is collecting donations to help the Alaska legalization movement. She writes, “As a member of the media, I’ve seen the dirty campaign tricks and lies that prohibitionists have been using over the past several months to sway Alaskan voters firsthand.”
As of the writing of this article, Greene’s campaign has already raised 60% of its $5,000 goal, and is still set to run for another 16 days.
Matt Brown, the founder of Denver-based marijuana tour company My 420 Tours, wasrecently interviewed by Ganjapreneur about what led to his decision to make a career in the cannabis industry after working for financial titan Bloomberg and starting his own tech company. Brown was interviewed by Mitch Shenassa, author of The Cannabis Aficionado’s Handbook and founder of Incredibowl, and the interview was recorded in audio format. The original interview ran for over 2 hours, and the recently published segment is one of many to be released over the coming weeks.
In this segment, Brown explains his own history and how he came to have the experience necessary to start a medical marijuana consulting business. After working at Bloomberg, he had a job at Accenture, a medical consulting and supply company, where he learned the ins and outs of small, independent pharmacies. “This is actually where a lot of my early dispensary consulting came from,” Brown says. “I reorganized the sales team for independent pharmacy sales. I created a spreadsheet that took industry metrics– So these sales reps, who aren’t particularly business people, will go talk to mom and pop pharmacies, who are also not particularly business people, get a couple really simple metrics, and immediately tell that pharmacy how they compare to their peers, and it was a big way to start selling a lot of the automated systems and ordering through back-end. But I got a really good feel for how these– You know, not Walgreens, but like real, small businesses work.”
Brown also commented on his involvement with medical marijuana in Colorado, his current state of residence, and how it has led to a successful recreational market upon the passage of Amendment 64 in 2012. “They let me grow pot as long as I follow the rules. These are the rules, they’re pretty simple. It’s not really that bad when you think about it. And that everything you get to see in this room, I get to do legally, and I don’t have to worry that I might go to jail, and even more, if you try to steal from me, I can call the cops, and they will arrest you and give me my weed back.”
The interview with Brown is part of a larger series of interviews by Ganjapreneur, whose aim is to feature prominent cannabis industry pioneers and provide insight to aspiring “ganjapreneurs,” or people who hope to make a career in any of the new industries relating to legalized marijuana.
Ganjapreneur also recently launched an open-source dictionary of every slang term related to cannabis and marijuana. They announced earlier this week that the dictionary is open to submissions from the public, and that they intend to grow and expand the database of slang terms over time.
In the middle of the 20th century, the realization that human behavior had an effect on the environment began to sink in. The Environmental Movement began in earnest in the 1960s in response to this oncoming awareness. Since then, many have been sounding the alarm that we can produce food and consumer goods in more sustainable ways. Industry and government have worked together to set standards to stop, or at least slow down, many of the negative effects caused by mass production and mass consumption.
At the same time the government pushed marijuana production, processing and distribution underground. Now that these jobs have surfaced in a legal market, twenty-three states have some form of medical marijuana, and two states have legalized marijuana for recreational use, there are no “green” regulations concerning the marijuana industry; however, there are some leading the way to a sustainable marijuana future.
Clean Green is leading the way by beginning to establish norms in Green marijuana cultivation. Certifying marijuana farms and dispensaries in California, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington, Clean Green is a qualified third party non-conflicted agricultural certification program. They also certify non-marijuana farms. Clean Green provides legal services and consultation to marijuana growers who want to grow green. Chris Van Hook, owner of Clean Green, says, “We don’t tell growers what exactly to do to grow green; we set the standards and let them find what works best for them to grow sustainable.”
“We use USDA organic standards to assess Clean Green applicants. For instance, when we test for pesticides, we don’t test plant matter, we test the soils at a USDA certified lab. This is the same methodology used on any other farm looking for that organic certification,” Van Hook notes.
He also has words of warning for those looking to circumvent the process. “It’s an $11,000 fine for falsely claiming an organic certification, so growers should be careful when claiming they are organic.” Some of the sustainable solutions Clean Green certified labels are using are solar panels, water collection, use of dry fertilizers, re-using soils by composting, organic teas, and adding a biodiversity of plant fauna to attract predatory insects.
Another organization working to limit the impact of illegal grows in Northern California is the Emerald Growers Association (EGA). The EGA recommends a variety of solutions for sustainable growers including Integrated Fertilizer and Irrigation Management (IFIM), irrigation ponds, containment ponds for contaminated runoff, and integrated pest management (IPM).
The association points out these additional features on marijuana farms create jobs. They say, ”By getting involved in the process of regulating the medical cannabis industry in California, the EGA is proactively working to create legal, tax generating jobs in our region and across the state. These jobs can be a vital boost to local economies.”
There are also economic incentives for growers going green. Some dispensaries in California put organically certified marijuana at the front of the line for purchase and pay a bit more per pound. Oakland’s Harborside Health Center, who is Clean Green certified, is one of the largest dispensaries to pay extra for sustainably grown marijuana.
Patrick Smith, owner of Green Bicycle Organics, an organic marijuana farmer and fertilizer manufacture in Northern California, says ”By being organically certified we solve the #1 problem growing legally in California: getting rid of our harvest.” He goes on to say, “When we grow green we get a great clean product. You know, like organic tomatoes, the fruit is just better.”
In Washington State, a marijuana grower has decided to go all green on their outdoor marijuana farm. Tahoma Growers who are located in Goldendale, WA say, “We are growing a marijuana plant that does not negatively affect the environment. We plan on setting the norm for Washington State sustainable, legal marijuana farms.” Working to grow other sustainable crops, these marijuana farmers are using sustainable farming practices such as rainwater collection, aquaponics, organic fertilizers and IPM. They have plans to add solar panels and LED’s in order to increase production in the future.
Willing to experiment with a variety of strains in order to find the plant that best fits the Northwest climate, the Goldendale Green Growers would like to harness the genetic vigor of the right marijuana strains to increase yields in a natural way. However, due to the massive amounts of energy needed to grow large scale indoor marijuana, the biggest boost to Tahoma Growers going green is growing outdoors.
With the help of Clean Green and the EGA, growers, dispensaries and consumers have an opportunity to educate themselves about the benefits to growing a greener marijuana plant. As marijuana cultivation begins to come into the light, growers will have more of an opportunity to grow sustainably. However, the most important factor that will help marijuana become a green product is its legality. By ending the “War on Weed,” local, state and federal governments can make marijuana farming part of a sustainable future.
In the second segment of our interview with Matt Brown of My 420 Tours, he goes into detail about the circumstances that unified the Colorado cannabis industry and propelled the state into the national spotlight when it legalized marijuana for recreational use in 2012.
In this clip, Matt Brown and Ganjapreneur contributor Mitch Shenassa talk about the early stages of a unified industry, working with the Colorado Department of Health, and coordinating with other medical industry businesses and activists for the first time. As a business consultant and friend of many key players in the push that ultimately led to the passage of Amendment 64, Brown relates the story from an insider’s perspective and the interview brings details to light that have never previously been reported in the mainstream media.
Listen to the audio or read the transcript below:
Matt Brown Interview, Part 2:
First time here? Go back to Part 1. Part 3 of the Matt Brown interview is coming soon!
Transcript:
Matt Brown: So it was kind of one off and I was at the July 20th Department of Health, 2009.
Ganjapreneur: I recall that one, that was my first one.
Matt Brown: Yep and then— it was the first one I’d been to, I had been kind of paying attention to it by this point and my plan—because, you know, it had gotten rescheduled like 3 times—it was supposed to be the beginning of the year.
Ganjapreneur: Yeah.
Matt Brown: But I was there, I remember being so overwhelmed.
Ganjapreneur: That was the one where I feel like I had to wait till like 4:30 to get my chance to say anything and by then it was like such a moot point.
Matt Brown: Yeah. I was probably closer to 8. I was like, I think my number was in the low thousands.
Ganjapreneur: Yeah.
Matt Brown: The thousands single digits or something and then passed. Bruce Granger was there, owner of Kind Love [dispensary], he was kicking the tires. That was the first like not-friend, or friend-of-friend I ever said, “Hi, my name is Matt Brown, I’m a cannabis consultant”, and I’ve known him ever since, I mean, Rhett Jordan, I incorporated him—[from] Native Roots Downtown. By the end of that year…
Ganjapreneur: I mean those two are some of the, you know cause this article’s gonna be read by people all over, those are definitely 2 of the biggest in Denver.
Matt Brown: Yeah.
Ganjapreneur: You know of the non-chain ones or the single store ones I would say they are the 2 that come to mind if people are like what are 2 dispensaries that I can go to that are not shit.
Matt Brown: Right! Uh, You know Andrew Boyens um, at uh, the one right above Sonota on Market street. 15th and Market?
Ganjapreneur: I don’t know Denver streets too well.
Matt Brown: Um, Native?
Ganjapreneur: Natural?
Matt Brown: Natty Rems. [Natural Remedies]
Ganjapreneur: Oh yeah Natty Rems is the third on that list.
Matt Brown: Yeah, Natty Rems, that was my first outside incorporation. I went to his house, his dad was in a neck-brace, and like sat down with his parents, we did the board meeting. Because when I figured out what my niche was—after, from July 20th through the end of October, I shut it down to start CMMR. People would come in, they’d pay me for consulting, I would explain the law to them, I would take where Warren [Edson] left off… Warren would scare the crap out of them with the law, and he said what it is and what it isn’t…
Ganjapreneur: Well that’s his job as an attorney.
Matt Brown: Exactly. And then he said you know, there’s nothing preventing a for-profit business the way California did, but he wasn’t business attorney.
Ganjapreneur: Right he was a criminal attorney.
Matt Brown: And there was no checklist you know, a lot of these people wanted the same kind of guidance you could get from somewhere if you wanted to open a Subway franchise or a clothing store, whatever there’s like a checklist.
Ganjapreneur: Right, right right, this is what you need, get this, get this, this is where to order your display cases, this is where to order your jars.
Matt Brown: And here’s what the government expects.
Ganjapreneur: Well yeah.
Matt Brown: How to get your sales tax license, what you have to pay on the state…
Ganjapreneur: Oh for sure—what documents you have to file—go Secretary of State, go IRS.
Matt Brown: Yeah. I figured out classification to get people sales tax IDs, when the city of Denver was still, there was one clerk at the office who was denying and I came up with like an herbal supplement something.
Ganjapreneur: That’s why….
Matt Brown: As far as I know I was the one who read the zoning code and found out about the plant husbandry license. Because I remember going to Warren and asking about it and the definition said, a license to take seedlings or cuttings and start new plants and there were over 100 plant husbandry marijuana licenses issued by Denver before the city council found out that they were issuing them at all.
Ganjapreneur: And then they didn’t revoke them, of course.
Matt Brown: And that was what I’d hoped, was that we had this inertia by the time the government figured out what was going on that, so that led to end of October when Josh [Stanley] and Wanda [James] and a group of people asked me to start this group—to go lobby for us, the legislature was going to start January.
Ganjapreneur: Which group was it?
Matt Brown: Coloradans for Medical Marijuana Regulation, CMMR. And we had 4 lobbyists: 2 democrats, 2 republicans. This was the first time openly, publicly, we all used the term “the marijuana industry..” And that was, I probably viewed myself as probably more like Frank Luntz than anything. That it was to set the language, and then context that we were talking about, then to sort of shape those legislative—it was Me, [Chris] Romer, [Tom] Massey and Matt Cook, in the early days, figuring out where you know, the structure—the stuff—you know, where they got the law. And so that was when I first became known, within the industry—November 2009 I went full-time. And from then through May, that was my full-time job, I got up in the morning and usually there was a call from Michael Roberts at like 6:45 in the morning.
Ganjapreneur: From the—the Westword Reporter??
Matt Brown: Yep. House Bill 1284—that was my baby— my six months.
Ganjapreneur: I remember the first time I met you was when I hit up Ian Silverii at the, who was my friend who worked at the Capital.
Matt Brown: Yep.
Ganjapreneur: And I was like dude there’s all these different fucking splinter groups, everyone needs to come together and at least sit around the same table and people need to figure out who’s playing with who.
Matt Brown: That was the moment when I gained legitimacy in the eyes of—I mean certainly [lobbyist] Fuffy [Mendez].
Ganjapreneur: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly—that was…
Matt Brown: …where Ian worked. And with the legislature. She had arranged a meeting with Romer, this was before Massey came on board with that bill, and Romer was gonna be there, they wanted quote, unquote all the groups in the room.
Ganjapreneur: Right. I feel like that meeting was somehow like this,
Matt Brown : It was a seminal moment.
Ganjapreneur : Yeah, yeah, not a tipping point but a seminal moment indeed, that’s correct.
Matt Brown: It was a seminal moment in that that was when, for me that was the turning point when I started getting the calls from Chris Romer’s personal cellphone and his personal Gmail account, saying Matt I need your help. That was when I became—they knew I was going to play ball, that’s how I would put it more than anything else, that I was the one who would…
Ganjaprenuer: That’s… it was a moment where, in my opinion it’s what made the progress we made so quick possible, it was a pull away from the reactionary all or none approach and you know there’s still people who criticize it and you know, I respect them for their integrity.
Matt Brown: And a lot of my most vocal critics at the time have been able to come around, like Miguel Lopez.
Ganjapreneur: Yeah.
Matt Brown: I was banned from the 420 [rally at the state capitol].
Ganjapreneur: Yeah Miguel Lopez was clearly very vocally opposed.
Matt Brown: And he and I over the last year and a half, since I moved back from Vancouver have been very good friends, well I mean we don’t hang out all the time but like we had a making up moment, we talked directly and with a little bit of time and a little context with how it all came together, both were in agreement. I have often said that from that time the one thing that helped me and my voice, and by extension, the CMMR, the moderate voice of 1284 to exist, to win and I did not realize at the time—it was very personal and painful at the time—was we had the Miguel, Kathleen Chippis, , and the Laura Krihos, and— we had that wing, which in the mind of the legislature became equal and opposite to the cops and the Attorney General and all of that helped.
Ganjapreneur: The complete opposite of the law and order.
Matt Brown: And they both just faded away like a movie moment of just complete irrelevance.
Ganjapreneur: They balanced each other out right?
Matt Brown: And I became that person who was in between the two.
Ganjapreneur: Yeah.
Matt Brown: And they never really— Romer, Massey, whomever—never really stopped and seemed to step back and fully appreciate that I was a half a step inside of so many of those people.
Ganjapreneur: Right.
Matt Brown: Even if there was some horse trading that had to be done and you know… “Vertical integration” was my term—I applied it to what at the time was just called “you got to grow your own”.
Ganjapreneur: And, you know, I gotta say vertical integration, that’s still a hotly contested issue in some parties.
Matt Brown: Absolutely.
Ganjapreneur: And that’s a matter of pure economics. The people who are opposed to it lost a livelihood.
Matt Brown: Yes. And you know what I think what was under-appreciated at the time was the point of view that I lobbied from, which was as a patient first who had a seat helping people figure out, and to define our industry as a Colorado industry, which by definition was a 2.0 California.
Ganjapreneur: Right.
Matt Brown: It was different.
Ganjapreneur: It was not the same for sure, we were not doing the same things again.
Matt Brown: It was a graduation, it was the next step.
Ganjapreneur: Right an evolution perhaps.
Matt Brown: And there was a feeling from the very beginning, yeah, that this was big, that there was weight to what we were doing here.
An Israeli start-up company has developed a new vaporizer that they claim will help grant doctors the confidence to safely prescribe medical marijuana.
The vaporizer, called the Syqe Inhaler, is designed to be the world’s first vaporizing device that will offer a metered dose of cannabis. This means there will be no more ambiguity about the amount of medicine you should take to treat your symptoms. The Syqe Inhaler uses granules of cannabis rather than raw flowers, so the amount of medicine used can be easily measured and professionally standardized. Designers describe their new product as a “pharmaceutical method for cannabis dosing.”
In Israel — which, with more than 20,000 patients registered, has one of the largest medical marijuana programs in the world — vaporizers are already an increasingly popular method of cannabis consumption. Widely considered to be a healthier alternative to smoking, vaporizing marijuana eliminates the harmful toxins that are released by conventional smoking methods.
Early testing of the device has yielded positive results: a study involving eight patients with neuropathic pain found that using the Syqe Inhaler led to a 45% reduction in pain intensity, with such relief averaging 90 minutes per dose.
The Syqe Inhaler is not yet publicly available, but is expected to appear in Israeli hospitals by the end of 2014. The design team hopes to raise $10 to 15 million in order to begin offering the device for home users.
With the marijuana industry on the rise, many growers are looking to take the next step and open their own dispensaries. And why not? Breaking ground in a newly legal industry can be exciting and potentially lucrative.
However, while right now there may seem to be a flood of opportunities pouring down, five years from now the medical marijuana industry is probably going to look very different from what it does today.
We’ve all heard the statistics. Most new businesses fail within their first year. In some areas dispensaries seem to be popping up like Starbucks on every corner, and many of these will likely go belly up leaving their once hopeful owners broke and disappointed.
But thousands more will succeed, building sustainable incomes, ingratiating themselves into their communities, hosting fundraisers and holding bake sales.
How can you be sure yours will be one of the thriving businesses?
Get Ready For Regulation
The first and foremost step in moving from grower to dispensary is licensing. You should be prepared — or prepared to pay a lawyer — to wade through a mountain of documents and forms, in some places 1,000 pages or more.
These sometimes bizarre regulations can be a major obstacle in opening a legal dispensary.Every state (http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/state-medical-marijuana-laws.aspx) has its own regulations. And so does every county, city and township. Are you too close to a school or park? Is your signage the correct size and not too obtrusive? Or does it need to be made even more obvious? Are there neighborhood fees or restrictions you need to be aware of? What sorts of edibles will you sell? And does the color of your gummies comply with code?
Once you do get through the paperwork, there’s still no guarantee the community will welcome you with open arms. Some neighborhoods are glad to see the arrival of legal marijuana, while others are busy passing anti-tolerance measures. Be prepared to deal with local hearings, similar to a new bar opening.
There’s No Business Like Grow Business
One thing the new marijuana laws will do is to introduce healthy competition into the marketplace, so if you want to go from grower to dispensary, now is the time to build a strong foundation for future success. A southern California realtor that works with growers and dispensaries says city officials are looking for people with strong business backgrounds who are able to handle large multimillion-dollar corporations.
So educate yourself. You don’t have to get an MBA, but you do need to be willing to put some time into learning about the ins and outs of running a business such as writing a business plan, creating a marketing strategy, maintaining a budget and all the other basics that go into starting and growing a business. Public relations may be especially important because, in many cases, you will also need to win over community support. As marijuana moves into the mainstream, there are bound to be changes in the industry. Make sure you have your bases covered.
Be Prepared to Partner
In some cases, simply having an extensive background in growing isn’t enough. You’ll need to provide bank statements and have a certain amount of cash behind the operation. This had lead to a number of “shotgun marriages” in the industry, where growers and financiers must team up to form a dispensary that can look good on paper. Some growers hire private investigators to learn everything they can about a potential partner. Others will look to build a larger team, meaning that no one person has total control over business decisions.
Know Thyself
If growing is where your skills are, don’t presume to know the business-side of the dispensary game. With all of the records and documentation required, you may wind up diverting too much energy away from the backbone of your business: your cultivation facility. Finding talented office managers and records controllers means keeping your focus where it needs to be. It can be difficult to delegate that much control to another person in your company, but it will pay dividends and reduce the stress on you. And your plants.
As unlikely as it might sound, lawmakers in New York are discussing strategies to legalize and regulate a recreational marijuana market as early as next year.
State Sen. Liz Kreuger (D) plans to reintroduce the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act during the upcoming legislative session, which begins in January.
The plan was confirmed by Brad Usher, Krueger’s chief of staff, who reported:
“We’re definitely introducing the bill next session. We’ve received a variety of feedback since we first introduced it last December and we’re working on amending it, so we’re looking to see what we can learn from Colorado and Washington when we reintroduce it.”
The bill would introduce a system of retail marijuana dispensaries monitored by the State Liquor Authority, and would instate an excise tax on all marijuana sales. Additionally, adults aged 21 and older would be allowed to legally possess up to two ounces of cannabis and grow up to six plants in their own home.
The bill is very similar to the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act introduced in 2013, which also aimed to legalize and regulate recreational marijuana, but that bill died in committee. The reintroduction for 2015 includes adjustments to how the excise tax would be structured and more clearly defines who would be allowed to work in the state’s marijuana industry.
Unlike Colorado and Washington, however, New York is not a referendum state and therefore requires strictly legislative action to make changes to the law. “In some ways, not having a referendum makes it harder,” Usher explained. “With referendum, you only need 50.1 percent support to win, but getting a bill through to law will probably require broader support to address the risk-averse character of some elected officials.”
A simple majority vote among legislators would be enough to legalize marijuana in New York. Therefore, in order to realize legalized pot in New York anytime soon, the state’s lawmakers are going to have to bear witness to the political and economic success of recreational markets in Colorado and Washington. Additionally, if the legalization initiatives in Oregon, Alaska, and Washington D.C. pass this November, more hesitant lawmakers may be inspired to further explore the possibilities of retail cannabis.
As things currently stand, however, New York City has averaged between 30,000 and 50,000 marijuana arrests per year since 2010, while 87% of individuals arrested for marijuana between 2002 and 2012 were black or Latino. Earlier this year, New York passed a restrictive medical marijuana bill to become the 23rd state to allow cannabis for medical purposes, but it is still strictly illegal to smoke the drug.
So far, so good. That’s the general consensus from cannabis activists on Colorado’s pioneering venture into legal recreational sales, but a number of challenges loom for medical marijuana patients and the burgeoning retail industry.
With all eyes on this national litmus test for legal adult access that began in January, several areas of concern including the recreational market’s effect on medical users and quality control issues have drawn the attention of advocacy bulwarks.
“It would appear that overall the legalization of retail cannabis for the general public has been a success in almost every measurable way,” said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. “It seems like an extremely successful launch and it really is helping other states, and for that matter countries, understand how they too can end cannabis prohibition and begin a tax-and-control policy.”
Morgan Fox of the Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project agreed, adding “Colorado is proving that marijuana can be regulated like any other legal substance, and that doing so is far better than punishing adults for using a substance safer than alcohol and allowing the market to be controlled by criminals.”
The medical marijuana community is especially watching Colorado closely to gauge possible negatives for patients in a two-tiered distribution system.
“What makes an adult-use law either beneficial, neutral or detrimental to patients has yet to really become crystal clear,” said Kris Hermes of Americans for Safe Access.
He noted three main areas of concern for medical users – “quality, consistency and safety” – as new recreational markets impact overall cannabis production in a particular area.
Regarding quality, strains that are appealing to the recreational market may not suit patients partial to “strains that have a positive therapeutic effect” but lack the psychotropic high desired by recreational users, according to Hermes.
“There are also consistency issues,” he continued. “Patients want to make sure that if they find a strain that works for them, they can continue to obtain it on a regular basis.”
Hermes also surmised that recreational users may care less than medical patients “that a product is free of adulterants or contaminants,” leading to health and safety concerns.
With projections to the tune of $1 billion in revenue by the end of the year, optimism is a prevailing sentiment throughout the Colorado cannabis industry.
“I’m sure when other states see that it’s a consistent thing, maybe a year or two, they’re going to jump on the bandwagon,” said Sasha Saghbazarian from the Caregivers for Life dispensary in Denver. “Judging based on how many people drive from other states just to come to Colorado to get legal weed, soon they’ll realize ‘wow, we could do this in our state and keep the profit for ourselves.'”
Fox from the Marijuana Policy Project also noted the precedent being set right now in Colorado as the wave of U.S. states that enact legalization measures continues to gain momentum.
“Businesses, regulators and consumers are learning from this process and are already making huge improvements in the ways marijuana is processed, packaged, sold and consumed,” he said. “As other states reform their marijuana laws, they will be able to learn from what Colorado is going through now. This type of development and refinement just isn’t possible in the illicit market.”
Ron Gold bends down and peers into the glass display case, which holds containers of product labeled “Purple Trainwreck” and “Strawberry Diesel.” He sniffs a small flat square of hashish. He marvels at the vast growing room, and the astounding variety of delivery systems that includes anything from lollipops to tortilla chips. Gold isn’t… Marijuana
For anyone who prides themselves on their knowledge of marijuana subcultures and slang terms, there is now an “open source” outlet to share this knowledge with the public. Ganjapreneur, a website dedicated to entrepreneurs and investors in the cannabis industry, has recently announced a marijuana slang dictionary that is open to the public.
The website publishes news articles and editorials intended to keep “ganjapreneurs,” or anyone who is pursuing a career in the newly-legal cannabis industry, informed about the state of the industry as a whole. The site offers original content as well as curated headlines via other websites that directly relate to the business of cannabis itself.
With the launch of the Marijuana Slang Dictionary, Ganjapreneur marks its first foray into user-generated content by inviting the public to submit their favorite slang terms and phrases for inclusion. Entries to date include “420,” “cheeba,” “bongwater,” and numerous others. Users may search the dictionary for a specific term, or browse by category. The slang dictionary currently includes categories such as “stoner phrases,” “paraphernalia,” and “units of measurement” to categorize its growing collection of slang terms and cannabis-related phrases that are commonplace in the industry.
A representative for the website explained that the dictionary is intended to be both informational and entertaining. “If you read through some of the example usages for the different terms, you can see that the writers had a lot of fun with the whole thing. You might see the word ‘dude’ about a hundred times in there. Maybe more,” he said. “We absolutely encourage anyone who is submitting a term to get creative with their definition. This is supposed to be fun, so by all means, smoke a bowl before you make your contribution.”
Ganjapreneur launched earlier this summer with a large volume of original news articles and a few interviews with prominent cannabis industry pioneers. Ganjapreneur encourages business owners who have an interesting story or compelling product to reach out to be interviewed, and also offers advertising and promotions via their website.
Marijuana has evolved from a disputed product to an open industry in a few years in the United States. The country has watched it grow from an experiment in California to local business in neighborhoods all over the states. In a short time, it has become a proud and accepted industry. This year Oregon is looking at an estimated $17 million to $40 million dollars in new tax revenue. Last year, Colorado saw $11.5 million dollars in the state coffers from marijuana. Now cannabis entrepreneurs are moving forward to enrich their cities and communities by giving back.
Stores like the Berkeley Patients Group and Earth’s Healing are providing free and low-cost marijuana to patients who can’t afford their product. The Berkeley city council has mandated that indigent patients be given this product for diseases like glaucoma and epilepsy. The Berkeley Patients Group didn’t need an ordinance, and had been giving cannabis away for years before it passed. But that ordinance assures that other dispensaries also engage in the same altruism that they do. Earth’s Healing also donates to schools, funerals, and other charities in its community.
Other organizations make political donations. The Marijuana Industry Group held a pot fundraiser to support their candidate Representative Ed Perlmutter of Colorado. He accepted the donation and spoke at the gathering of 50 marijuana business owners. Perlmutter spoke about the need for dispensaries to have access to banking options, an issue near and dear to the heart of the industry.
Some organizations are donating a portion of sales to worthy causes similar to major retail chains. Shaun Gindi of Lakewood Colorado runs two dispensaries and introduced “Joints For Japan” during the Japanese tsunami disaster. He took the revenue from a special hand-rolled product and donated 100 percent of it to the Red Cross to help affected Japanese citizens.
Finally in Brownsville, Oregon a dispensary owned by Gail and Randy Simpson will donate floor space to a resource center for citizens while it awaits licensing. Educating patients can decrease the amount of time it takes per transaction while providing a valuable community service. It also gives staff members a chance to interact with patients and show their training.
Cannabis entrepreneurs across the country are enriching their communities with charity and social responsibility. This industry has changed how we think of cannabis forever, now it is changing the world.
Jeremy Carr has written for Yahoo! Finance, Made Man, E-how and the Times and Democrat newspaper. He is also the author of two science fiction series including Vampire Spider Women, and the Milky Way Worlds Wars.
New Approach Oregon, the political powers behind Oregon’s Measure 91 (a bid to legalize, regulate, and tax marijuana for adults aged 21 and older), intends to purchase massive amounts of ad space in preparation for November’s ballot.
In fact, according to ORESTAR, the Oregon Secretary of State’s electronic campaign finance tracking system, New Approach Oregon’s $2.23 million filing is the second largest transaction spent on a political campaign’s advertising efforts in the state.
Interestingly, New Approach Oregon currently only has about $300,000 to its name — that’s about $2 million short of the necessary amount to pay for all of the requested air time. Campaign spokesman Peter Zuckerman has announced that he is confident in the campaign’s ability to fundraise the remaining money. Additionally, the support of many rich out-of-state campaign backers — such as travel-guru Rick Steves and sex industry heavy-hitter Phil Harvey — are undoubtedly bolstering the campaign’s confidence in its fundraising department.
The deal will go through Media Analysis, a firm based out of Portland that buys television ad space for political campaigns.
In Colorado, there will soon be a limit to the amount of product recreational marijuana growers can legally produce. New rules dictate that commercial growers will have to prove that 85% of their product is being purchased before they can increase their number of plants. The goal is to limit the availability of excess pot without starving the market and turning consumers back to black market weed.
These changes are largely sparked by law enforcement complaints in neighboring states. In fact, since the advent of retail marijuana at the beginning of this year, legally-grown cannabis from Colorado has cropped up in 40 different states, law enforcement officials report. “We can’t ignore the marijuana,” explained Sheriff Cody Beeson of Cheyenne County, Kansas. “It’s just hard to justify pulling resources … to put them on the highway to just strictly find marijuana coming from Colorado.”
The issue of out-of-state marijuana trafficking was heavily debated during Colorado’s initial legalization efforts, and has continually been a cornerstone for many arguments against legal marijuana in general. “The trends are what us in law enforcement had expected would happen,” confirmed DEA Chief Michele Leonhart during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in April.
However, while Colorado’s recreational marijuana is indeed crossing state borders and could potentially cause law enforcement problems elsewhere, it’s important to remember what legalization accomplished: not only are less U.S. citizens being arrested for nonviolent and harmless crimes, but the legal weed market is generating millions of dollars in taxes for public schools and other important state programs in its state of origin. The industry produced a wealth of new jobs, and — beyond the complaints of out-of-state trafficking — Colorado’s legalization experiment has been incredibly successful across the board thus far.
The production cap, however, has pitted some members of the industry against each other: a debate between industry veterans and people who are trying to get involved with the legal weed market has some tensions running high. Colorado’s marijuana market is opening to new entrepreneurs in October, but some have criticized the current market for favoring large-scale, pre-established grow ops over smaller, independent operations.
Adding fuel to the flames is a recent proposal to allow indoor warehouses to grow twice as many plants as outdoor greenhouses. Under Colorado’s original medical marijuana regulations, cannabis was grown in energy-intensive warehouses only — but now greenhouses and even some outdoor grows (depending on local zoning issues) are allowed. Some argue that the industry should encourage production that uses less energy.
Ultimately, however, the decision will fall to Barbara Brohl, head of Colorado’s Department of Revenue, the office charged with regulating marijuana production. There is currently no deadline set for a decision to be made.
Tweed, the first company to enter Canada’s federally-regulated medical marijuana market, is now looking to hire experienced trimmers for their massive grow op in Ontario, according to this recent tweet.
The growing facility itself, located in Smiths Falls, earned media attention several months ago for reportedly being the largest structure ever dedicated to growing legal marijuana. Now a massive grow op, the building was originally a Hershey’s chocolate factory.
So if you’re in the area — or looking to relocate for the chance to enter Canada’s burgeoning medical marijuana industry — it’s probably worth your while to polish up that resume and send it in.
What follows is a list of qualities highlighted by Tweed’s Master Grower, Ryan Douglas — these are very important considerations when applying for a job at any grow op:
1. Attention to detail. My growers are constantly watching over the plants for any sign of imperfection, so having a keen eye is a huge asset when it comes to keeping plants healthy and safe.
2. Timeliness. It’s more than just showing up for the start of your shift. Knowing when to water a plant and making it happen on time can mean the difference between a room full of mediocre plants and a room full of amazing plants.
3. Cleanliness. My growers keep their sections meticulous with daily mopping, sweeping and washing. If you have a track record of keeping your workplace clean, make sure to highlight that skill on your resume.
4. Honesty. Working with a product like marijuana means having employees that I can trust. Passing a criminal background check is only part of the process. Work references that verify your honesty at previous jobs can help put a manager like myself at ease.
5. Organization. With 30 varieties and 50,000 plants at full capacity, it’s critical that my growers keep impeccable records.
6. Hustle. The Tweed grow-op is a fast paced, 160,000 square foot plant production environment. If you’re not exhausted at the end of the work day, something’s wrong. A proven track record of hard work can speak volumes when I am considering the next addition to my team.
Competition for the positions will likely be steep, so remember that Tweed’s grow op has an entire football field’s worth of marijuana cultivation to trim, and that’ll probably require a small army of experienced trimmers.
Matt Brown is the co-founder of My 420 Tours, based in Denver, CO. He was directly involved in the movement in Colorado that led to the passage of Amendment 64, which made the state one of the first places in the world to legalize and regulate the production, processing, retailing, and consumption of cannabis for recreational purposes.
Matt was recently interviewed by our friend Mitch Shenassa on the record, and over the course of several hours Matt revealed much never-before-publicized information about how Amendment 64 came to pass, along with a wealth of knowledge about his own history and how he got involved in the MMJ industry. This is only the first segment of what turned out to be an awesome interview: stay tuned for more in the near future! Listen using the media player below, or scroll down to read the transcription:
Matt Brown Interview, Part 1:
Click here for the next segment of the Matt Brown interview!
Transcript:
Ganjapreneur: So how did you get– I mean, what did you do before you came to cannabis?
Matt Brown: I was… Back in the day–
Ganjapreneur: I feel like you have some professional background beyond just growing pot.
Matt Brown: Yeah. My degree was in finance, and I started off at Bloomberg in New York.
Ganjapreneur: Okay.
Matt Brown: I did a few different things there, I had launched their Islamic Banking platform, I like invented it, which was awesome.
Ganjapreneur: So what did you have- what role did you have in that? Like what did you–
Matt Brown: I– There was nothing for Islamic-specific investors, which required al– I mean it was basically a sin industry filter, you can’t have anything too much interest.
Ganjapreneur: Ah.
Matt Brown: Not more than 10% of the company’s interest, obviously–
Ganjapreneur: It’s almost like an ethical investment fund, yeah?
Matt Brown: Yeah, it’s very similar to Catholic investments, and a lot of other, like, you know, socially responsible investment packages.
Ganjapreneur: And there are green investments, and yeah, it’s a socially responsible investment package.
Matt Brown: And so I was there at Bloomberg, and the Bloomberg terminal is, I mean it’s like Google with financial stuff from twenty years ago, still the most relevant pertinent, whatever.
Ganjapreneur: Yeah.
Matt Brown: Every piece of financial data about every equity, debt, you name it in the world. And I was on a team- I was doing all the university recruiting that year. I was supposed to be going to London to get energy and shipping analyst, where they like track every freighter ship in the world, which is awesome.
Ganjapreneur: Right. And they’re like, all this coal is going here, all this steel is going here, this much is gonna be there next month, so, and then you can start speculating commodities off that?
Matt Brown: Yep, you could arbitrage back the light sweep spread between North Atlantic crude and West Texas Intermediate with the number of days it’ll take to ship there, and to cross, and–
Ganjapreneur: I gotcha
Matt Brown: It was crazy shit. But it would have taken a visa, because I didn’t have my Canada citizenship at the time, they changed the law in 2009 and I got it.
So I was there in New York, the woman who was supposed to be transferring me to London waiting for the visa stuff asked me to transfer to university recruiting, so I did all of the class of 2005 Bloomberg University recruiting nation-wide.
Ganjapreneur: That’s pretty cool. So is that like traveling around, meeting prospectives? Or just sitting in the office and looking at applications?
Matt Brown: Both. I mean I had- I think I averaged like 150 interviews a week.
Ganjapreneur: Wow. That’s twenty– Well, thirty a day if you’re not working weekends.
Matt Brown: We’d do these interview events, which helped with some of it, so we do a really– You basically come in and do like a three minute interview with four people–
Ganjapreneur: Right.
Matt Brown: You know, sort of group setting, everything’s open, you got a feel for what you wanted, bring in twenty or so callbacks. But I worked with the CEO, you know, nobody took over for Michael Bloomberg when he went to became mayor. And, ah…
Ganjapreneur: Nobody took over for him?
Matt Brown: Well Max Fen– Or, Lex Fenwik was the CEO’s name. When Mike Bloomberg left and became mayor, Lex took over as CEO.
Ganjapreneur: Okay.
Matt Brown: Nobody in the company there has an office. It’s like a trading floor environment for all–
Ganjapreneur: It’s just an open room type thing? That’s wild, that must be a huge room.
Matt Brown: Oh, it was. And we were on the same floors as the sales, and Bloomberg TV. So like I shared, I mean, kitchens, huge kitchens with like free food, all over any of the Bloomberg offices. Anyway. So like, there’s an afternoon CNN anchor now, who started out at Bloomberg TV – I actually trained her for a day in one of the departments. But you would just like hang out, and like Dave Chappelle came in because the Charlie Rose show was filmed there.
Ganjapreneur: Right, so then you’d just be in the office, and you’d just see everyone.
Matt Brown: Just come through, ’cause he was like, coming into do the Charlie Rose show. Which is awesome.
Ganjapreneur: It was totally open, so yeah.
Matt Brown: So I worked with and I sat facing the CEO. We were like 10 feet apart and there was nobody in between us. ‘Cause I worked with Laurie who reported directly to him, I just had this crazy direct reporting relationship. So I got the idea, I realized there was just a bunch of fund screeners and stuff we needed. I Photoshopped it all up, and I figured out like what the fund screeners would be to get the programmers. I pitched it at like six o’clock on a Tuesday night, or whatever, and…
Ganjapreneur: So you just walked up the CEO of the company from your mid-level position?
Matt Brown: I was friends– Oh, I was as low as it comes at this point. But I was friends with the- his assistant, her name was Sumi. So I talked to Sumi, I was like, can I get five minutes with Lex? I’ve got an idea I wanna pitch. It was pretty fun.
Ganjapreneur: Okay.
Matt Brown: And so I came up and pitched it–
Ganjapreneur: Was that not terrifying to do?
Matt Brown: No, not at all.
Ganjapreneur: Okay, you were ready, you knew it was a good idea?
Matt Brown: I love, yeah. Just something– I’m a debater. I like slipped into that debate zone of like game time and treated him like anybody else that I was telling my idea to. Three minutes in, he green lit it– I couldn’t get more than five minutes standing next to him just showing the stuff, he said it’s fucking brilliant – his exact words. The head of Asia Pacific called, sales called, this guy named Alex Bruce, and he was like, Alex, as soon as I hang up with you gotta call this kid Matt Brown back, he’s here in the New York office. Like, they were a really connected office, he was based in Tokyo. Sure enough, ten minutes later he’s calling, the next morning I’m talking to head of London media sales. We had a prototype live in like two days, and that has sold over half a billion dollars’ worth of terminal revenue, just that feature, since–
Ganjapreneur: I can see that immediately. How long ago was it?
Matt Brown: 2005. Four or five.
Ganjapreneur: Almost ten years. About ten years.
Matt Brown: We sold a– These terminals cost – assuming you need more than one – sixteen hundred and fifty dollars a month on a two year minimum contract. Most banks would pick up like a hundred or more. So I kinda got my start there, it was a cool flat company item, I went to Accenture. ‘Cause I didn’t get transferred to London, I found out my boss was lying to me, and had never put in my visa application. So I went to Accenture, spent two and a half, three years there as a corporate strategy consultant. Cardinal Health was one of my big clients, they were the Fortune 19 company that supplied– You could literally pick up a phone and say, hi I’m building a hospital. They’ll go, oh great, we’ll send a person. And they will put an employee there and will deliver every single thing in there from the biggest x-ray machine to the q-tips.
Ganjapreneur: You just need a building, pretty much, and they’ll turn it into a hospital?
Matt Brown: Yeah. They supply everything to every type of medical provider in the world. I got to reorganize there. This is actually where a lot of my early dispensary consulting came from, was– I reorganized the sales team for independent pharmacy sales. I created a spreadsheet that took industry metrics– So these sales reps, who aren’t particularly business people, will go talk to mom and pop pharmacies, who are also not particularly business people, get a couple really simple metrics, and immediately tell that pharmacy how they compare to their peers, and it was a big way to start selling a lot of the automated systems and ordering through backend. But I got a really good feel for how these– You know, not Walgreens, but like real, small businesses work.
Ganjapreneur: And that’s I think, really, at that level, pretty analogous to at least the old school dispensary, if not the modern rec one.
Matt Brown: Yeah. I mean for the, you know, the 2009– So, I had that, I left Accenture to be—I had a tech startup. We failed to get our second round of funding in August 2008 and everything fell apart. And I did this small business consulting wherever I could to at least stay afloat for a year. And then—2009—
Ganjapreneur: Hey, where’d you go to school before all this, I didn’t ask before?
Matt Brown: Boston University.
Ganjapreneur: Boston U, okay.
Matt Brown: Magna cum Laude, school of finance class of 2004. So I was here- I’ve been a patient since 2007, I have Crohn’s disease.
Ganjapreneur: When did you move out here?
Matt Brown: August 2006.
Ganjapreneur: Okay, so shortly after you got out here, pretty much, you became a patient.
Matt Brown: Within the first year, and I didn’t know we had a medical marijuana law when I moved here.
Ganjapreneur: And back then there wasn’t much about it, no.
Matt Brown: No, it was, you know, when I got– It was Doctor Glazier, I don’t know if you know her. She was the only doctor in the state that was taking patients. I was– I’ve got my card actually, it’s out in the RV. My first one, card number like 5228, I think. Back when they used to be just sequentially ordered.
Ganjapreneur: Right, right, right.
Matt Brown: And I had a stack of paperwork this thick, and it was 250 bucks for the doctor visit. But I got it, I started growing them for myself, for the first two years I grew by myself at home. I loved giving tours of my grow room to my friends and stuff who’d come out, and my roommates would have friends come visit. ‘Cause I had all the signs up, I had the law on the wall, and it really became the foundation for My420 tours, before I’d take them in the room, I’d point at it and I’d start chuckling, say, I have Crohn’s, you know that. I– Colorado’s a cool place, it’s a lot better than Massachusetts where most of them work from. They let me grow pot as long as I follow the rules. These are the rules, they’re pretty simple. It’s not really that bad when you think about it. And that everything you get to see in this room, I get to do legally, and I don’t have to worry that I might go to jail, and even more, if you try to steal from me, I can call the cops, and they will arrest you and give me my weed back. We’d all chuckle, and I’d take them in the room.
It was a tiny little room–one light. I did breeding. I had like, eventually, half my basement for my own breeding stuff.
Ganjapreneur: And this was what, 2006? 2007?
Matt Brown: Seven? Eight? Nine? Spring 2009 I started doing a little bit of consulting, I just had a bunch of friends who were growing.
Ganjapreneur: So before that it was strictly, like, personal, you weren’t in the industry, per se, you were a grower?
Matt Brown: Yeah. I sold weed one time as a grower, and it was when I was all done and shutting down my room to like one of the Russian dispensaries, it was like February 2009.
Ganjapreneur: When you could still backpack it in?
Matt Brown: Yeah, exactly, and they’d buy whatever shit I’d come in with. But I grew for myself, I had like, eight different strains for myself.
Ganjapreneur: And your friends were growing? Out here?
Matt Brown: A lot of friends were growing. And they wanted me to tell them- teach them what the law was, how to get the card, who to talk to, just that basics. And then what they quickly realized was, they needed to be a business. And, I mean, I incorporated my first business when I was sixteen.
Ganjapreneur: Yeah.
Matt Brown: I helped my buddy when I was eighteen do a hostile takeover of his dad’s construction company and put all the equity in his name a year before his dad ended up dying, like I know business, it’s the geeky thing I do. And so there was a ton of these growers, who wanted somebody to teach them the basics. Even for a while I would book appointments at Warren’s office.
Ganjapreneur: That’s funny.
Matt Brown: Like I’d book a four hour block, and then just take client after client, and have them each take an hour, and they would pay, and I would just sit there and listen. That’s how we met. And then he moved in with me when I started consulting, and we shared an office.
Ganjapreneur: Who’s that? Oh, Warren Edson.
Matt Brown: Warren Edson, yeah.
This is only the first segment of our interview with Matt Brown! Click here for the next segment of the interview. Questions for Matt? Get in touch via My 420 Tours or leave a comment below:
It should come as no surprise that the multi-billion dollar companies behind our society’s most popular and deadly painkillers are suspected to have been lobbying for decades to keep cannabis outlawed. It’s easy, from a selfishly-economic viewpoint, to understand why they would do this: if everyone had the option to self-medicate with an easy-to-grow plant (it’s literally a weed) — especially one with so many medicinal applications — people would stop spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month to maintain their current painkiller prescriptions.
With marijuana law reform an increasingly popular topic among Americans, opponents of legalization have been scrambling to find their footing amid the influx of marijuana advocacy. Today, there remains yet a small group of anti-marijuana academics who are commonly sourced in opposition to legalization, and — new records suggest — this final bastion of academic resistance indeed sits comfortably on the painkiller industry’s payroll.
Dr. Herbert Kleber of Colombia University is one such leading academic voice against marijuana. He’s often quoted by both prohibitionists and public media in general, his argument being that legalizing marijuana could lead to widespread addiction and other public health issues. However, as VICE recently reported:
… what’s left unsaid is that Kleber has served as a paid consultant to leading prescription drug companies, including Purdue Pharma (the maker of OxyContin), Reckitt Benckiser (the producer of a painkiller called Nurofen), and Alkermes (the producer of a powerful new opioid called Zohydro).
Another academic, Dr. A. Eden Evins, is an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Evins is on the board of Project SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana), an anti-marijuana special interest group. She has often publicly spoken out against efforts to legalize marijuana, telling the NY Times last year, “When people can go to a ‘clinic’ or ‘cafe’ and buy pot, that creates the perception that it’s safe.” Unsurprisingly, after her participation in a commentary on marijuana hosted by the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, the publication’s administrators disclosed that as of 2012 she was working for a number of painkiller drug companies. One such company, Pfizer, currently has plans to introduce Remoxy, a direct competitor to OxyContin, to the painkiller marketplace.
Dr. Mark L. Kraus, who runs a private practice and serves as board member to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, has also publicly outspoken against marijuana. And, sure enough: one year before going on testimony in 2012 against Connecticut’s medical marijuana bill, he was serving on the scientific advisory panel for Big Pharma companies such as Pfizer and Reckitt Benkiser.
And it’s not just choice medical academics in their pocket, but entire political campaigns as well. In a recent Ganjapreneur article, we covered how the Colorado government’s most recent and notorious anti-marijuana campaign was “funded by a $2 million grant from the state attorney general’s office, though much of that money can itself be sourced back to legal settlements with various pharmaceutical companies.”
Painkiller overdoses claim 16,000 lives per year in the U.S. — more deaths than heroin and cocaine combined, and the most of any country in the world. Meanwhile, there are still zero reported marijuana overdoses in all time. Yet painkiller drug companies, when faced with the pending legalization of what’s considered by many to be a miracle plant for its myriad medicinal uses, are simply lobbying harder than ever for prohibition.
There’s a million different review sites out there, but how many have your businesses name on them? You’ve just Googled your dispensary and all of a sudden you’re seeing profiles that you’ve never created with incorrect or outdated information on them. It’s a challenge for any ganjapreneur to keep up with, let alone master. Between Leafly, WeedMaps, THCFinder, and even mainstream sites like Yelp, there’s a steady stream of reviews coming in about your shop. Follow my steps below and you’ll be ahead of 90% of your competition.
Claim Your Profiles
Most places will go ahead and set up a page for your dispensary before you even know it. Often, they’ll pull information from your site; other times they’ll pull from each other. This means you’ve lost control over the flow of information. Take it back by claiming the profile. On most pages, you’ll see something that says “Is this your business?” or “Claim this listing.” It’s usually helpful to be by the business phone, as some do PIN verification with a quick call, but having an e-mail address registered to your domain (yourname@yoururl.com) is another easy way to prove you’re responsible for the account. This is also a huge reason to revoke e-mail access for employees that are no longer with your company. If a site that doesn’t know you from the hundreds of other dispensaries listed receives an email from John Doe-sntworkhere, they might turn over access.
Post Stunning Pictures
Once you’ve successfully claimed a profile, you can go to work. You’ve spent a good chunk of change creating a space that is welcoming to your clientele, be it patients or recreational users, so show it off. Having good shots of exactly what your shop looks like gives people an immediate first impression when viewing you online. You can also look to save money when it comes to product photos. There are a number of great photographers available to shoot those high-end nug close-ups, but in my experience people prefer seeing what your actual buds look like. These “action shots” of your buds in jars or on scales are more authentic, as anyone can pick out the best of their harvest and trim it perfectly. Try showing great looking product in everyday circumstances.
The Menu Must Be Right
Customer frustration over menu discrepancies will tank you from the opening moments with a first-timer. Some people make long drives to get their favorite strain and severe disappointment sets in when they see you’re sold out. Communication between your budtenders and desk staff is paramount so that the moment something is off the shelf, they’re on it. There’s nothing more refreshing than visiting a WeedMaps menu and seeing it was updated in the last half hour. I’d always instruct desk staff to make minor changes, adding a word here or there to a description, so our menu looked fresh for everyone who visited our profile. Patients noticed.
Take Advantage of Specials
Most sites will let you post their version of a status update, a key way to communicate with potential customers. Simply adding that you’ve received a new strain that day or Budtender X is working can bump you to the top of the recent activity log. There are customers who spend most of their day surfing these sites and are looking for dispensaries that interact. A bonus is the ability to offer specials on your page (usually a reflection of your first time or referral deal works) to reach bargain shoppers. Again, the key is staying active.
Respond to Reviews
This is, by far, the best piece of advice I can give you. Respond to negative reviews. Have someone in your company who can take the emotion out of the situation and has strong empathy skills. While some negative reviews (“YOU GUYS SUCK!”) warrant less communication on your part, people who leave a detailed account of a bad experience are expecting you to reach out. All of the major sites give you the ability to post an official response. Understand that not everyone who was unhappy is out to get something free and think about them more as your eyes and ears when you can’t be in the shop. If someone thought the service was rude, a manager should be able to tell you when they were in and who the employee was. They didn’t like a certain strain you offered? Maybe there’s an issue in your cultivation facility. No matter what, do not get into a shouting match on the internet with someone.
Respond to Positive Reviews
The happy campers deserve your time just as much as the next person. They’re also usually much easier to respond to. When others visit your page, seeing interaction between a company and customers that’s positive is a great sign and encourages them to leave their own. Again, this is a great place for you to comb for information as well. I would make sure to sift through the reviews and let employees know when they received a shout out online. It’s an easy and free way to boost morale.
Have a question about how to maximize your online profiles? Talk to me in the comments below.
Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter confirmed Monday that he will sign the city’s bill to decriminalize cannabis possession. Similar to other decriminalization bills passed in other major cities, this bill reduces the penalty for possession of small quantities of marijuana to a mere $25 civil fine. With this development, Philadelphia is set to become the largest city in the nation to decriminalize marijuana.
The bill was originally proposed by City Councilman Jim Kenney in May. Originally opposed to the bill, Mayor Nutter’s caveat for signing the bill was the addition of a $100 fine for smoking in public — however, this fine can be waived following several hours of public service.
Under current law, marijuana possession is punishable with at least a $200 fine, a course on drug abuse, and a criminal record. Kenney explains precisely how the new amendment improves on the outdated system:
“We’ve gotten to a place where it is out of the criminal realm. There’s no more handcuffs, no more bookings, no more criminal record… We have so many young people that we are putting in the prison pipeline, and the poverty pipeline, because a criminal record is a debilitating thing.”
The bill is expected to save the Philadelphia Police Department approximately $4 million per year. Additionally, it will prevent an annual 4,000 innocent people from being arrested for something as harmless as marijuana.
Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) announced on Saturday that he believes marijuana legalization is an issue to be decided individually at the state level. The Senator’s claim came during a debate with election rival Greg Orman, in which Roberts was asked for his official opinion on marijuana legalization.
“That’s not a federal issue,” Roberts said. “That’s a state issue. If you want to get a Rocky Mountain high, go west. That should be for the Kansas legislature and the governor to decide, not federally.”
Mr. Orman, an independent candidate, also weighed in on the issue. While he also avoided expressing any real opinion one way or the other, he did note that the federal government’s war on drugs may have ultimately been misled, and that in time federal policies may be adjusted appropriately:
“You know, we’ve had a federal policy in this country since the Nixon administration that doesn’t seem to be working. We’ve spent over $1 trillion on it. With that said, as the senator has mentioned, we do have states that have started to work with different policies as it relates to legalization. I think it would be prudent for us to take a step back and watch what happens in those states before we determine how we want to change federal policy.”
Tom Angell of the Marijuana Majority, a popular group supporting marijuana reform, commented on the development: “When a Republican senator from Kansas tells a the feds to let states legalize marijuana in the middle of a tight race for reelection, its pretty clear that they days when politicians thought they needed to be as ‘tough’ on drugs as possible in order to get elected are over.”
Medical cannabis dispensaries come in all shapes and sizes. Here are some examples of dispensaries that have set a high bar for industry designers, each appealing to a different niche and personality.
1. The Gallery
No frills decor can be done right with the proper curator. Finding local artists who want to hang their works in your dispensary can create a buzz with your customers and while also supporting the community you’re in. Finding an artist that’s “420 friendly” can also help bring in business when they let people know you’re showing their work. The potential clientele you attract is educated and will spend more time in your business, always good for buying. You don’t have to sell a ton of art, either. Just don’t buy it. Some of the worst decisions I’ve seen were spending money that could have gone to improving furnishings on pieces that didn’t move or didn’t fit the space. iVita
2. The Showroom
The hottest trend in dispensaries right now is the open air style of shops like Frosted Leaf and Euflora. Display jars are situated on tables in the center of the room instead of in glass cases like many first movers. Raw product isn’t accessible by simply opening the lid, however, as small holes in the top let customers smell but not touch. This allows many people access to a dispensary at once and reduces the number of staff that need to be on hand to open jars and explain strains. Orders are usually placed via tablet, touch screens, or by dry-erase boards and given to a cashier who rings them up. Initial costs are high and service may decrease, but many rave about the atmosphere.
Frosted Leaf
3. The Spa
For medical marijuana facilities, presenting a calming, health oriented space can do a lot to put patients at ease that may not be familiar with therapeutic cannabis. Often times they’re not looking for a loud, in-your-face place that has bongs sitting everywhere they can fit. Bright, clean whites and blues project wellness and can lead to a perception of a luxury product that is worth paying more for. It’s also a great way to reach women who can be turned off by more dorm-esque atmospheres. Wood flooring, indoor plants (that aren’t marijuana), and water features are musts.
Native Roots
4. The East
One of the best examples I can think of is Lodo Wellness Center, who hired Andrews Construction and Consulting to do a total revamp of their basement-level dispensary. From most of the pictures, it looks more like a reading area (or possible opium den) than any form of dispensary. Low-sitting chairs, oriental rugs, and ornamental statues give the place a comfortable feel that many appreciated while waiting for long lines. While I’ve never seen many people just hanging out down there, this can be a great idea if you’re looking to hold patient education sessions, have a staff meeting, or just need a sofa to crash on after a long day at the dispensary. A little Zen never hurts when dealing with the stress of marijuana businesses.
Lodo Wellness Center
5. The Bank
File ‘em in, get ‘em out. Having multiple points where you can execute sales allows you to decrease wait times while still giving individual attention to orders. Denver Relief has a terminal at each end for conducting transactions, while using the middle areas to educate patients on products. As soon as they’ve made their selections they can slide down and pay. Dividers also provide a little privacy while people talk instead of an open environment where sound tends to travel. Still, with more people comes more noise, so look into sound dampening panels if your space tends to be on the louder side already.
Denver Relief
6. The Everything
Have trouble self-editing? Why bother! Just carry a little bit of everything. A majority of shops I’ve seen fall into this category, with a hodgepodge of different art, products, and aesthetics all mashed together. While it can project a messy outward appearance, most younger guys are just happy you’ve got glass cleaner and novelty t-shirts. The further you deviate from one of the established motifs listed above, the more you’ll notice you fall into this category. If you notice this happening, look back to your mission statement, core ideals, and make a decision. Pivoting isn’t always bad, but you don’t do yourself any favors by not committing in either direction.
Lacontes Clone Bar
So, which type of dispensary would you prefer to frequent? Someplace peaceful and relaxing, techy and modern, or a place with a funky personality and some kitsch? Share your thoughts in the comment area below:
