Simple Conversations

From 0 to $65 Million Selling Cannabis Legally | SC66 | Mike Pachan

• ASG • Season 1 • Episode 66

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What’s been annoying you this week?

Yep, you read that correctly. One of the Most Unusual Business Success Stories Ever. 

Mike Pachan is a decorated BusinessMan, especially in the Colorado Cannabis Community. Known for his Innovating Business Models based on Mistakes from Others and his Masterful yet Motivating Mindset.

Mike agreed to Join ASG to discuss how he grew a $65,000,000 Business through simple innovation.

Follow ASG -  www.beacons.ai/simpleconvos
Follow Mike - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-pachan-5b7bb335a

Chapters;

00:38 - The $65M Question
04:34 - How Shock Skyrocketed Sales
07:22 - Dirty Money
13:17 - Keeping the Street Model
17:38 - Business Man’s take on “Entrepreneurs”
21:30 - Getting Too Close in Sales
24:51 - Going From $1M to $50M
28:43 - Looking For Crazy
35:26 - Cold Sweats at 2am
38:16 - ASG = Ghandi
39:19 - Branding a Business

#business #motivation #podcast

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Peace.

When you explain to people you made $65 million selling weed, what's the first reaction? I don't think a lot of people believe it. To be honest, I mean, you say this stuff, but it's kind of funny if you listen to American hip hop, you know, some of these like hip hop stars will talk about moving like a pound of concentrates. And I mean, we're moving a pound of concentrate on lunch, not like in a year. It equated about 4,000 pounds of material a month consistently through our pipeline. It was a blast, you know, it just a widget. So we just got in the middle and used an existing business model and you know, based it on operational integrity, communication, team development, and just turned our widget through the pipeline. Yeah, I came across your Facebook when you mentioned like how you scaled, obviously like your pre-rolls and stuff from like 7,000 a month to like over 60,000. And I just kept thinking of like, there people that were reading that from like, known areas that used to sell it and stuff or something thinking this guy's made so much money just like putting what we would sell on the streets and did a cardboard boxes and selling off to businessmen. Right, yeah, you know, and it just came down to just strategy, right? So the pre-roll brand brought me on and they were doing a couple hundred, maybe a thousand or two units a month. They didn't have a slogan, right? So at the time, everyone thought that a pre-roll joint was made out of trim, which is like the big holes of the cannabis plant. We were using the entire plant, including the trim, so you got a lot of the good flour. So we coined a term called full flour. And that way when I went into a dispensary and they said, I don't buy pre rolls. Great. Why don't you buy them? Well, they're full of trim. We don't use trim. We use full flower. So we were creating brand strategies behind it. And then we deployed a team of field marketers who would show up at the dispensary, set up a booth and we bought them joint costumes on Amazon. So they'd look like a joint sitting in a dispensary. And then we'd go on Fridays and we pitched deals. had a whole way to pitch deals. Two joints, eight bucks, two joints, eight bucks, two joints, eight bucks. and we'd introduce the market directly to the product. It was a good product, so it had sticking power, and then those sales would lift. Did you kind of play on the whole people were maybe a little bit like shocked that we'd was legal now? Yeah, yeah, I mean there was, you know, different times throughout, you know, because I got in in 2010 when it was just medical and I was there when it flipped to rec in 2014. And I was a heyday. I mean, we couldn't believe we were getting, you know, $3,000 for a pound of weed. You know, that's, that's, that's pretty rockstar stuff. We were selling outdoor junk for 1800, you know, and that was, you know, it was full of seeds and stems and we were still getting 1800 wholesale. But no, mean, that was the exciting time because it wasn't normalized yet and that's what made it exciting. And one of the reasons I got out in 2023 is it really started to normalize. And then also some of the cultural rot that you guys see over in the Europe that we see over here started to infect the industry and it just wasn't fun anymore. So, you I got into the trades, which is more of the blue collar. And to be honest, weed was very blue collar when I started. and I'm attracted to that. I think it's an all-American attitude to have. So the fun kind of started to dissipate from it, but the shock value was super fun. know, the first time I went into a topless bar, I was there maybe five minutes and the gal walked over and was like, it's your first time in here. And I was like, dang, you knew. You could sit in a dispensary and do the same thing. People walked through the doors and just in awe. And it was like, your first time, right? And they were an easy sell. They were there to spend three, four, $500 all day long. Especially if you're dressed like a joint singing them a song, we would poach deals pretty quickly. But yeah, no, it was cowboyed out back then and that's what made it fun. Yeah, people almost didn't believe this is an actual model, but when you were saying like the fun kind of went, did it become almost a point where people were so normalised now to it being legal, you couldn't just play off the shock value, you almost had to like innovate the industry a lot of butter, make something that people couldn't just get on a street corner 10 years ago. Yeah, yeah. And it was also just, it became safe to do, you know, and, know, it wasn't unsafe from like, someone's going to come get me with a pistol. It was unsafe when we first started, you know, the guy who ran the Marijuana Enforcement Division for Colorado, he was ex-FBI in the company I was working for at the time before I was self-employed. We were one of the larger operators. So we had him in for a private meeting and we said, Hey, when's FBI going to get here? And start hunting around, he's like, you're a fool if you don't think they're already here. Anything you don't want on record, don't say in this building. And at the time, I was the 2,327th person in the world, and I have it, I could reach over and get it in a moment, a badge that I had to fill out, and I had to tell the United States IRS they could go through my records at any time. I had to tell the FBI what I was doing, I had to label fingerprints. That way organized crime couldn't come in. But there was only like 3,000 of us that filled out that paperwork for years. That's not a whole lot of people to gather up and get rid of, you know? So there was always a constant hum in the back of your head like is today the day they start kicking in doors. You know, Obama had put the Ogden memorandum up which told the DEA if a state wants to do it and it's in their constitution, which Colorado did, don't kick their doors in. California was just running off proposition, so was county to county, which is why the DEA was kicking in their doors. But at the end of the day, you're up against a lot of big corporate money, and I'm honestly shocked and surprised we didn't get our doors kicked in. But now there's like 150,000 of those badges floating around, so no one's gonna go to jail for it. I used to have to walk into the bank and not talk about what I did. It was hard for me to get a lease because even just, I'm a homeowner now, but even just renting an apartment, they didn't want my money to take to their bank. We couldn't have social media, even just a personal social media. So like that safety net is now under people. And when we were doing it, you know, like my parents had no idea what I was doing for the first three years. Until they sat me down, my mom was like, I think you're selling drugs out there. And I was like, I am, but legally. just even explaining that conversation to people. So now it's just so normalized. It's just not. That was the fun part to me. So you obviously mentioned getting an apartment and stuff was difficult then because it's kind of almost like, this is like a weird thing to draw comparison to, but I've always heard of people who are content creators haven't asked you getting apartments and stuff because the people almost don't believe that this is real. Like they almost think they are hiding something. So would you say that even though your business was legal and what the product you're selling was legal, it was almost all seen as dirty money? Yeah, because you got to understand that like, you know, in the U S we have federal and then state, right? And the 10th amendment in our federal constitution says if what a state wants to do isn't laid out in this constitution, the state can do it over here. That's what the 10th amendment says. So each state in the U S can be its own Petri dish. So Colorado put it into their constitution. So the money was legal in the state, but not federally. So, you know, if an apartment, if you go to buy an apartment and you don't pay cash for it and it's like an investment, you're taking a federal loan from Fannie and Freddie to mortgage your apartment that you're renting out at a profit. Well, if my dirty money from a federal sense gets flagged in their bank account going up to pay that mortgage, they lose their federal funding. So even like a bank, if it's not a local credit union or a local bank, but even they have ties into the Fed. So everyone's tied into the Fed over here, which is not how our country was supposed to run. So no one wanted to touch that money. And to be honest, I mean, we taking money in that just stunk like weed anyway. So you'd walk in and people would be like, what do do for a living? You'd be like, nothing, nothing. I bought my home that my wife and I have when I was still in the industry. And we're at closing signing all the final paperwork and the gal was super nice at title and she was trying to be polite, make conversation. Said, oh, it's a beautiful home. Like you must make good money. What do you do? And I was like, I'm not here to talk about work. Keep your mouth shut. And I was so rude to her cause I was like, you know, I just didn't want the deal to fall apart at that point where I'm like, I'm paying for this home with weed money. You know, like that, that wouldn't work. So like, with that in mind, and with you mentioned that you had to make people aware of what you were doing and stuff, it still does blow my mind that it was kind of a legal and a legal system. But how did you like hire people or even elevate a team whenever you know these things around that like these people aren't going to be able to fully enjoy what they make? So that was actually the fun part. When it got normalized, all the people who would have never touched it previously came in with like pretty big, deep, thick resumes. The one thing I love, so when I first got my first job out of college, the company I worked for had an incredible leadership and training program. And I've kept that with me as I develop my own. So what they poured into me in 2006, I still carry with me as I'm helping businesses develop. When cannabis was first around, no one wanted to touch it. The people who touched it were people who didn't have a resume to go down to the local hotel and get a job. They had no college experience. People wouldn't hire them. I did, and I also trained them, and I poured into them, and I taught them skillsets, and many of them today, mean, someone texted me three weeks ago, was like, hey, I was just thinking about you. Cool, what are you up to? I still own my own small business. I bought a house, like, These people are excelling because no one would pick them up as team members. And I was bringing them in because I was the only people that come play the game at the time. But they had to by default, you know, but they're very multiple because they had never known what it was like to go through corporate training. They never knew what it was like to get a review. They never knew what it was like to say. Hey, that was a pretty good day today. You wanna sit down and talk strategy. I think you could have sold more. Do you wanna give this a shot? No one had ever done that for them. And those people are very appreciative when someone does and it goes a long way. They were the best team members I've ever hired and to a certain extent. With that, was there any that came and went that they maybe just didn't get the idea that this is a business? They'd kind of see it as what it used to be? Yeah, there was tiers of people there. A lot of the complainers who didn't make it in the industry were like, well, this used to be so good. My business used to be good. And it was like, no, it wasn't a business. It was a hustle. And there's a big difference. If you have a widget and you sell it to cash and that's it, that's a hustle. A business is a multifunctional ecosystem that's more of an algorithm than a linear equation. And those people didn't like the legalization because they couldn't keep up with it. They couldn't organize they couldn't structure They couldn't build a program. They couldn't do a brand. They couldn't have a message. They couldn't pay their bills So they were upset and they washed out pretty quick and the more Regulation that came in to make the widget more refined the more they washed out But then it peaked with too much regulation, which I think both of our countries love and now it's just gotten to where you almost can't even make money doing it. But yeah, lot of those people, people kid themselves when they say they have a business. If you're a 1099 subcontractor, that doesn't necessarily mean that you own your own business. That just means another business pays you to do work for them. There's a big difference between being a 1099 subcontractor and actually owning an actual business. It may not in the state size because you have an LLC and a business bank account, but a lot of what people call business, to be honest, really don't qualify as a business. It's just, it's not. Yeah, it's paperwork pretty much. Yeah, it's paperwork, right? It's a formality. Yeah. So these people that did stay the test of time and they proved their worth on it, how did you help them understand the difference between the hustle and the business? Because the model doesn't really change, does it? So that was actually how we build our model, right? So back to the example, if you own a production facility and there was a dispensary down here, you guys wanted to go out in the parking lot and beat each other up like you did in your hustle. And we treated it like a business. You had to email us stuff. You had to communicate properly. You had to provide coordinating paperwork. I was going over, we were selling product for one of the top growers in the state. and he was still putting the trimmed up cured cannabis in a turkey bag and shoving those into a plastic trash bag. And I was like, bro, aren't you the top tier? Aren't you coming for the, you know, the best product in Colorado? I am. And I'm like, not with this packaging. And he refused to pivot. So I had to go out and buy him proper packaging to put his product in, to even represent what we were selling. Like people were just, they didn't want to pivot and adapt. So we would do a lot of that for them and we forced professionalism. We were moving oil that they make brownies with and we were seeing that demand go up. And before the state mandated pesticide testing, were, because we knew people were cutting corners in cultivation and spraying like Eagle 20 on plants to keep bugs out. But Eagle 20 at a 350, 500 degree temperature turns into liquid cancer, you know, and we're testing this oil and it's more. Eagle 20 than it was Hash Oil and we're like, this doesn't work. You know, so we were forcing moments of professionalism into the industry and people abided to it because of the volume we were pushing through our pipelines. We actually were able to, in our own small way, push the industry forward rather than allow that hustle to consume it. And that's the downfall to a lot of small businesses in any industry is they can't take it from a hustle. to a real organization. And you see that a lot in small business, which is why a lot of them collapse. Yeah, I can see it especially in your word, because I'd imagine when you were, like you said, you were kind of there at the forefront of it whenever it was first starting. And I can imagine people were, as they grew, lost sight of the business side of it, thought of as a hustle of we need to prioritize quantity instead of the quality of it. But like you said, you were almost bringing in these mandates and these systems before they were actually put in by law. And was that something that you wanted to do because you could see yourself scaling the business to where it to or was it just like if I'm going to do this and I'm going to be the only person doing it, I'm going to do it right. Yeah, you know, and that's just kind of like, so now I'm in contracting, right? Home exteriors. And you see the same tricks in this that you did there. People don't believe me when I say there's a lot of overlap between contracting and weed. And there's just a ton, you know, because look at contracting, like most people these days, like most men aren't masculine enough to grab a hammer and put a nail into the wall themselves. So you pay a contractor and that contractor knows you're relying on them. So they'll put that nail in the wall any way they want and you'll pay them. So it's the same thing. You know, and I think contracting is changing these days, slower than the cannabis industry changed. It changed on a dime, contracting's moving a little slower, but we're even just looking to force professionalism into this industry and the market will gravitate towards that. So, you know, the market gravitated towards us because we could show up to people and thin the herd and say, great man, I'm over here. I see mites on your plant. I see you trimming right there. Isn't that PM, isn't that powdery mildew? yeah, we do this, that and the other. Cool, you're off our radar, we don't sell for you. What? No, call someone else. They're not gonna call you back. They're not actually gonna be able to move your weight. They're not gonna be actually follow through. Call us when you're ready. We'll come back. We won't tell anyone. We'll come back. We'll do our QCs. So when you own that amount of volume through the pipeline, you could actually push and force change. Otherwise, these people were just sitting and it's funny, because everyone can sell till they have to close the deal. Everyone can pick up chicks till you gotta take her home. Nobody wants to take them home. It's the same thing. Everyone can sell until you've to close the deal. Closing the deal is sales. Other than that, you're just running your mouth. How do you feel about the whole entrepreneur hustle culture type thing? Does it kind of look from someone who is actually an entrepreneur, it kind of seem to you like it's just kind of anxiety with an Instagram filter and insecurities? Yeah, no, that's a great way to word it. I probably would have dropped more F-bombs than that. yeah, no, that's... mean, you know, no, it really is. It's just like, it's, you know, things are easy these days. You know, I'm hashtag LLC, hashtag entrepreneur, but it's like, what do you, what do actually do? You know, I work hard. I like to work hard. If this is out of the hustle or not, I don't know. I'm just, I just stay busy. But you know, it's like everything else, it gets a little tropey and a little diluted. You know, I even teach in all of my sales programs, I tell people don't build relationships and they freak out and panic and they're like, what do you mean? And I'm like, sales is not relationships. Sales is getting things done for people. Start there. I tell them they can blend a relationship, but if you show up at my house and you're like, well, I have chickens too and we got things in common and I go camping, I like firearms too. I'm like, get them. off my property. Go. You're gone. I don't want talk to you. I don't care. I'm a homeowner. Are you going to show up? You're going to communicate? You're going to do your job? You're going to get out of here? You're going to send me the invoice, right? How many things do you have to do to get the transaction done? It doesn't matter if we have commonalities. Don't build a relationship with me. I don't want it. I want you to get in and get out and do your job. That's more important to me with the salespeople that I train than I showed up and talked about Harley-Davidson's for two hours. Cool, why another roofer did the inspection and closed the deal, bro? So it's the same thing with the whole entrepreneurial thing. Social media is so easy to blow smoke. It's like that one gal and her boyfriend who put on, they were like van life and he ended up whacking her and they were supposed to be super happy. And they're like, I want that life. And he's like beating on her and stuff. you're like, man, social media is so easy to mask who you really are. Just take some editing. So you see that in a small business culture too. The worst thing I just got back on LinkedIn, I have no other social media presence, don't want it, was everyone was a CEO all of a sudden in the weed business. And you're like, of what, dude? Of your LinkedIn profile? Like, come on. So, and now they're all gone, because it's not cool anymore, right? Yeah, it sounds exciting, I like the way you drew that comparison to that documentary because I watched it over the weekend. But the other one I watched was the mom that had the family YouTube channel and ended up tying them up in the basement and stuff. I think I look at stuff like that and there's been so many people that have emailed me to come on the show saying that these like big business owners and stuff. And the thing in the UK is that you can find out if someone is an actual business owner pretty easily and it's free to do it. And there were so many people that had registered a business, put like a one pound coin into the business. So it was, it had a balance to count as an actual business and they've never done that from it. And they've set it up from like 2017. They have all their bios, business owner, hostler, entrepreneur. It's so many of them. Yeah, and people get duped by it. You know, that's the thing. You're like, man, I don't, but yeah. So no, was interesting and it was fun to see the washout. You know, I tell people all the time, if you go into the cannabis space and ask who Mike Pachin is, no one will know my name and that means I was successful because if people know your name in that industry, you're a fool and you cheated people and they were out to get you. The highest players in the industry, no one even know who you were. because you got in, you did your business and you got out and you didn't piss anyone off. a perfect way to exit out of it almost because you made your money but you got out scot-free and I like that thing you said about with your CEOs people you tell them not to build relationships because I had Kerry Lutson last year and he's like a big financial advisor but he sells a lot of like financial services to people who they're trying to make money away from what they actually do make money doing but he was saying that It's probably the harshest thing he learned was when you're a salesman, really can't almost grow a friendship with anybody that you're selling to because you're going to have to play on something that is almost like an insecurity to them, maybe not directly, but you're going to have to find their pain point and press it. And if you're friends with them, you're going to go home and that's whenever you start just drinking whiskey to all hours of the morning and probably buying cannabis off you and smoking it to all hours of the morning. Yeah, no, it really isn't. The other thing I caution people to is you're building that relationship thinking you're making a new friend and they're building it so they can not pay their invoice at the end of the project and throw you under the bus and say, we're friends. And it's like, now you got to go back to saying, no, we're business. Doesn't work, man. Just doesn't work. You know, and you can say transaction and people think it's a one time deal and it's not. We come back and re-roof homes quite a bit through storm restoration and that can be a relationship. But again, it's a trope now and people hear relationship and automatically plug in personal. You can build a professional relationship and never interject personal. I had a client in cannabis, he owned a dispensary and he also owned a cultivation site and they used to run a hash concentrates, BHO, butane extracted hash. Had some great hash. I was moving $10,000 to $20,000 worth of hash for him a month. I had literally had a key to his dispensary. I walked in as employees would say, how can I help you? You're in charge. And it wasn't bravado. It was just because I made them money and their paycheck's cash because I was selling hash for them. So I kept the business rolling. I'd text him all the time, hey, Andrew, you want to go get lunch? I'd probably only lunch at this point. He'd go, what for? And I'd say, I'd just ... It's just a professional offer. goes, I don't need a relationship. And I'd say, great, I don't either. I was sitting there one day waiting for my hash order to come out. He walked in and you could tell it him because he had the Rolex on and the Converse. And he was talking to some investors who wanted to buy him. He knew who I was. I no idea. looked over and looked past. He thought it was just some customer. I was, you know, I'm that guy. I text him later on. was like, cool to meet you. He's like, we met. I'm like, I was sitting there. He's like, cool. Then we met. I'm like, sweet, let's just keep doing business. We didn't care. We were both making money. What do we care? And that was the relationship was make money. It doesn't have to be any more complicated than that sometimes, right? Like it just doesn't. yeah, people bring too much feelings into it, think, especially in businesses so cutthroat, you can't almost be friends with someone. But I... the guy I work with now, I call it the quadfecta of no-nos. We're neighbors, friends. We just had a small business together and we exited and then now we're employer employee. And it works great because we're just type A alpha males that sometimes lions just got to be lions and you know, it is what it is, but we're somehow able to navigate it. It's pretty wacky, but most people couldn't do that. Nah, I don't think so. But I've had this question in my head all day because I've asked so many people who have came on the show that like I've had Dustin Krakowski on who owns like a hundred million dollar roofing company. I asked him this question. I got so many emails and he gets so many comments about why I asked him this. But I almost like asking the questions to business people that come across a bit more like psychotic because people always want to know how do you scale the business to a million dollars and things like that. But I'm more interested in. How do you scale a business from a million dollars to 10 to 50 because it's almost a different game you're playing at that point. Yeah, it is. mean, the smart ass comment would be a million at a time. But I think you're asking for something more intricate than that. You know, a small business, when someone first starts a small business, an entrepreneur is a utility tool and they have to do everything. And everything that they're doing is done half ass, 75%. But they're getting a lot of stuff done at 75%. Then they're gonna bring on people who are willing to take that big risk and they're kind of wild and crazy too to work for that, especially in a sales capacity. And you're gonna give them a program that probably pays them to let it grow, but doesn't work in the long run. And then you have to take that and you have to start to formalize it and create actual structure and bring on very specific athletes, specific employees. and you have to start to compartmentalize the company out and have really dedicated positions, roles, and responsibilities so that that can then grow because the next round of team members you're gonna hire are not cowboys that can handle hecticness. They're not wild and crazy. They're not getting in a wagon moving west and getting shot at by the damn Indians, right? They want consistency. They want a nine to five. They want PTO. They want retirement. Those are not cowboys. Those are people who live in the cabins because the Cowboys settled the Wild West, right? And that creates scale. So people think scale is more sales or more revenue. It's actually a stronger foundation so that you can grow because if you're not ready to handle Johnny Susie who needs to look at the business and go, it's settled. I know what to do. Things come across my desk. I do them well. You're never going to retain talent. and then it doesn't matter if you have 100 million in sales, it'll collapse because you won't have anything to support it. A lot of times when businesses get acquired, they take the current CEO owner out, him on the head, put him on a board of directors and bring in a real CEO. A lot of times an entrepreneur does not make a real CEO because that, what got the job done, everything being done 75 % doesn't work anymore. Things need done 99 % correct. That is a large sticking point for people to run scale because it's like sending your kids off to college. A lot of parents struggle with that. You gotta be able to let go and let really talented people come in in really small areas and pay them well and trust that it's still gonna work. And then know in your heart that you could not do any of those jobs the same way they are. And if you come in and try and do them, you're just gonna upset people because those people wanna be there. to be the quarterback or the kicker. I mean, in my training, I tell people a transmission in a car makes a poor differential. A differential makes a really poor windshield wiper. You look like a fool going down the highway with a transmission slapping across the window of your car. It wouldn't work. So what are you stepping on my toes for? Get out. That's really, really hard for people to do. And most of the time, businesses can't scale because that entrepreneur cannot get out of their business and allow the real professionals to come in and grow it. Do you think that whenever you're finding those people that are going to elevate you, or even if you're looking at like even business partners that you think could take what you're doing and make it ultra successful, you're almost looking for a little bit of crazy in them. Yeah, at a certain level, right? And then as the hierarchy broadens out more to your day-to-day team, you don't want crazy, crazy upset the apple cart. And you also have to realize like conversations that are had up here should not translate down here. Cause if you say something that might happen because you're creative and you can accept that maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. These people hold you to it because they hear, you know, A to B to C and you're jumping all around the alphabet like a wild man. So. You know, got to start to wall stuff off. And then it's just, I don't believe in luck. I just don't. I think if you show up, you create situations that you can manage. But, you know, then it's a wild ride and you're to have to move, shoot and communicate with the best of them and see if it pops to that next level. And it doesn't always. feel like you've got a mindset and outlook that a lot of people that are on those self-improvement or personal development journeys are kind of looking to get to the end result. It's simple, it's plain, you know what it is and you know what you have to do to get it. How did you develop that? I don't know, I think I have a gut feeling. I kind of open my mouth and just start talking. A lot of what I do in my training, like I brought to the roofing company, a manager dash less system. I stole that from the weed industry. Someone did water hash, so was solvent dash less, solvent less, but water is the universal solvent, so he was playing off of it. So I took it and wrote manager dash less. The owner of the company came to me and found something Steve Jobs said in like the early 2000s where he said the same thing I said. I didn't hear that from Steve. I just said it intuitively. I get really upset at people and that weakness I turn into a strength by going, what upsets me? I'm gonna change that so other people don't and most people don't even know what's going on so they don't get upset. I feel like I'm just kind of an antenna and I pick up on things. And I go, I don't like that. I don't like that. I don't like that. I don't like that. And then I try and change that so other people never receive it. So probably just a God given intuitiveness. And then, but the thing is, is plenty of people can't handle that. You know, the owner here can, cause he's a man and he knows lines do lying shit. But I've washed out a plenty of companies cause I'll get on ownership's nerves and they just can't, they can't channel it, you know? But then they also don't scale and people who really want to scale right they want the pain So I'll bring the pain But you know it's also kind of like from a workout sense if you're in pain you're But a lot of it's just intuitive to be honest with you I like that, which you mentioned about, you have your gut feeling and you follow it. That is kind of, it's almost like a pain point now for a lot of people because they get gut feelings, don't quite look at it, and then they start overthinking into why did I not? And then it falls into a big trail. Do you have any advice for people that have those gut feelings, but they just don't have, there's no gunpowder in the gun to go off? Yeah, I call it spoon bending. There's a really interesting story. A guy named Yuri Geller came over to the US from Israel in the 60s and he could bend spoons like you see on The Matrix. He'd hold a spoon up and bend. No one could ever prove they couldn't do it. But he would come into rooms and I mean there's a picture of President Carter and he put a spoon in Carter's hand and Carter bent the spoon along with him and they knew he'd bring kids in because kids don't tell themselves no. If you tell a kid they can do something they're like They're more in that yes mindset. And he could group Ben Spoons, but there's this journalist who said he was not legit. And anytime that journalist was around and he would be yelling at people, can't do this, he can't do this, nothing would happen. Right? So it's kind of like being at a house party. Everyone's having fun till one person shows up and they're so toxic. They just biff the whole party. Yuri Geller couldn't Ben Spoons when this one person was around, but he could any other time. So again, in a small business, if you have different compartments and you have a spoon bender, you need to let that person sit there and bend spoons. you don't need group decisions and group meetings with non-spoon benders, because all you're doing is saying no, and you should be saying yes. And if you can afford to take that risk, you may need to take that risk. And if you don't, it may cost you a lot more money and a lot more growth and scale than the mistake would have caused you. But not everybody can bend a spoon, man. And if you got someone that can bend a spoon, better get out of their way. Someone else will hire them and that company will bend spoons. Yeah, that's one of the best analogies because as soon as you said it, I understood what it meant, but I could still hear what you were saying and just thinking in my mind of like a growth lesson would be bending spoons. It's quite funny to say out loud, but what you said is so true because I've seen that story so many times and it's almost like the power of overthinking. so I talk about compartments a lot, like think about it, like gears, you want an admin compartment that does not make mistakes because that's their mindset. They do not make mistakes. Right. But like on a business development compartment, you should be praising mistakes because that's the role. You have to get out and try and test and learn. like a raptor hitting the fence, that sucked, that sucked, that didn't, there's our weak spot, go, charge the line, charge the line. You can't have an admin in a meeting with a business development person because there ain't gonna be no spoons bet, because it's not this person's job to bend spoons, get them out, get them out of decisions. Operations and executives should be able to blend the needs of the two. So again, specific athletes, a CEO's job should be making sure those compartments touch when they need to and stay separated when they need to. No win. Business development might need to burn through a little money in a year to see if the field marketing's working or if the new sales sheet is working. Or what compensation package is giving you the best return. We gotta try two or three and then adjust. But if you're just rock solid, like, can't do this, it might cause a mistake, you don't get it. You don't get it. You've been in business a long time and you've done many different forms of it and you've been successful in many different ways of it. But is there any moves you made or opportunities that you must still wake you up at 2am cold sweat shivering thinking fuck why not just pull the goal and that. When I finally graduated college, it took me six and a half years to get a four-year degree. I woke up for years afterwards, cold sweating, thinking I hadn't turned in a paper. I barely graduated by the skin of my teeth. I wasn't meant for college, shouldn't have ever went. But that's different story. I wish we could have exited the wholesale company. We weren't able to won't really get into that story as a business partner thing and some things he did on the side some habits He had they got picked up, you know By those officers of the law and then that tarnished our license so we couldn't flip the business That one I think about quite a bit. It wouldn't have made me I probably could have softly retired But you know, I get a good amount of money in the bank and invested that would have just been a little kick over the top That one still gets to me from time to time You know, because that habit he had is just so stupid and you're like, it's just unneeded. You know, it's a couple of dollars worth of a good time just really sank a larger buyout. But you know, I'm proud of all my failures because I've also, you know, buried myself financially pretty good once or twice and then dug myself out. But I took the shot on goal, you know, and that's just where most people stop. They just, they're too worried about what other people are going to think. Just take the shot and also like when you have an idea people always go friends and family Don't go to your friends or family first of all, they're never gonna buy anything off of you. So now they're gonna be super poor feedback on your widget but third of all like You know If I was a professional athlete Which I'm not because I'm a small dude If I came home at Thanksgiving, my family wouldn't see me as a professional athlete. They'd see me as Mikey The little two-year-old that was pooping his pants and shouldn't have been Same thing, if you're a go-getter in your business development, you're an optimist, your family's never gonna see you as that. They're see you as a kooky guy who always has an idea. Don't go to your friends and family with this stuff. They're just gonna tell you, oh, that's cool, and you're like, it's not what you want. Go to a friend that's gonna be a friend and be critical and rift with you. Go to a leadership group, go to an incubator, go be around your people and talk it through with your people. Don't, friends and family ain't gonna get you anywhere. That's a hoax. That's a hoax. They're not gonna get you anywhere. I heard a great quote over the weekend that summarizes what you said. It was a quote from a lecturer, I think he might have been at Stanford, but he said that people are too busy trying to change the opinions of people that already have their opinions of you set in stone. So like these people that never take opportunity, because they're gonna laugh with me, they're gonna think this is weird, or they go and they chase the buzz of, I hope that person likes me now when I make it big or something. Those people. have a vision of you in their head. They've known you probably for longer than you're ever going to do, whatever it is that's going to make you successful. And it's never going to change. No amount of success is going to change. It's like the guy that bullied his whole life in school driving a Ferrari. He could turn up at a reunion in a Ferrari. They're still going to have all the memories of what they done to him. It doesn't just wipe them away. Right. Yeah. And you know, it's kind of like a business. You got to grow out of that and go into another new community. But yeah, I get tired of when I hear, oh yeah, and your first market is your friends and family. It's like, that's just, just ask for a loan. They're not buying off you because they believe in you. They're buying off you because they feel bad for you. You know? I just don't buy into that. To round off this episode, I've got some questions about the whole branding aspect of the cannabis business. Cause this is, this is the thing from my perspective that makes me laugh about how there's people like sitting in bedrooms trying to think of how to make like a weed logo or something look cool. But when you were bringing into the cannabis business, how did you brand it in a way of saying this is a business? Cause obviously you've got, you've already know going in, you're going to have no, the money that smells weed. It's never going to be really seen as clean money. How did you brand the business in a way that your even your customers coming in was like, we're not going to something shady here. This is a legit business. Yeah, so rather than look at branding the company or even the product, I looked at taglines and phrases for the product. Because what we saw is you'd have five producers and as soon as pre-rolls got big, everyone all of a sudden was a pre-roll company. Soon as hash got big, everyone was all of a sudden a hash company. So it didn't really matter what the company brand was. and the product brand the customers didn't remember. So I would create taglines for what the product is, right? Full flower. What's full flower? It's the joint that uses flower and trim. Didn't have to say that. You know, we were working with a gummy company, you know, and people didn't, they wanted a quick uptake, you know, so tagline on that. KJL. wanted to infuse CBD with THC, so taglines on that. SphereX was doing a distillate product and no one really knew how distillate was made. So we created a cut sheet that showed a quick example in a cartoonish fashion how distillate was made and how it was perfect terpenes, the perfect match. Right? So we were taglining things because people wouldn't remember the company or even the product, but they would catch the tagline. And we found that was most effective. So like 111 had a pre-roll that they would have rosin on the outside, liquid rosin on the outside, and then sprinkled with keif. So I called it a half gram joint wrapped in rosin dipped in keif. And I'm a hand talker. We didn't actually wrap it in rosin, but it painted something in people's mind. We didn't actually dip it in teeth, but they could see it going down a manufacturing line, crushed on products like that. So the tagline was more important because a customer shows up and they come up to the dispensary and they've bought in the same vape pen for a year. Which one do I get? It's in the orange box. Well, now there's three orange boxes. Shoot. But if they had a tagline behind it, isn't it the one with the perfect terpenes? Don't I buy the pre-roll that's full flower? Isn't it like wrapped in something? Boom. And it was always a way to remember to come back. And you don't see that in other industries because McDonald's is the company branding, Big Mac is the product branding. Very rarely can people say the jingle of a Big Mac, but they know they go there. Chick-fil-A is the company branding. The brine chicken is the product and then they have a tagline that no one remembers. We had to flip it and go with the tagline to work up. And that's just something I learned being out in the field. I'll leave you with this gold nugget. Don't ever tell the market what it wants. Listen to what the market wants and let the market tell you. If you go out with a product or a service and you tell the market it's going to want that, people are going to say no, thank you. But if you listen to what the market actually wants and you solve for that, you'll probably outpace your competition. And I went around off and saying off where can people find you make and what are you up to at the moment? Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. Hi, throw up some heat. I hope you guys aren't in that cultural rot where you're a little sensitive because I throw some heat on my LinkedIn. That's all the social media I got. I'm the face of Blue Peaks Roofing right now. You can find us on Blue Peaks on Facebook, Blue Peaks on Instagram, Blue Peaks on TikTok. The I'd Roof that YouTube channel is starting to lift. I get on there and say some crazy shit too. My LinkedIn is linkedin.com slash i n slash Mike. I'm lighting it up on the day to day man saying what I want. They don't like it buy me out of my contract.