High Spirits: The Cannabis Business Podcast
Hosts Ben Larson and AnnaRae Grabstein serve up unfiltered insights, reveal their insiders' perspectives, and illuminate transformative ideas about the cannabis industry for people who want to make sense of it all.
High Spirits: The Cannabis Business Podcast
#062 - Blunt Banter with Ben & AnnaRae | Meadowlands, Hemp Beverages, Reinventing Yourself, Harborside, Port Workers Strike, Trulieve Defamation Suit
Let's be honest, it's been a solid run of shows this year for two busy CEO's self-producing and coordinating (and writing these descriptions). Travel schedule has definitely ramped back up and we somehow got to the beginning of this week and hadn't really thought about it! So we're falling back to our original inspiration for the show and recording our weekly check-in on all things cannabis business.
This week, we attended hashtag#Meadowlands, David Hua and Meadow's California-famous gathering for cannabis leaders amongst the redwoods in the Emerald Triangle. Ben spoke on Tuesday about ... wait for it ... HEMP BEVERAGES (big surprise), while AnnaRae took to the stage on Wednesday to school us on reinventing one's self, leadership, and business. The whole event was so incredibly beautiful with incredible guests and speakers, as it has for the last 8 years, and should provide plenty of fodder for Thursday's conversation.
ππ» ππ΅πΆπ π²π½πΆππΌπ±π², ππ² π°πΌππ²πΏ...
π² The famed 8th annual Meadowlands event in Mendocino
πΊ Hemp Beverages and their opportunity for unifying the cannabis and hemp movement
π¦ Reinventing oneself, leadership, and business amid shifting sands
πͺ The downfall of Harborside, the most consequential dispensary in cannabis
π’ The port workers strike and potential impact to supply chains
π§ββοΈ The Trulieve defamation suit against the Amendment 3 opposition
Join us as we recap the weeks events and look towards Benzinga's Cannabis Capital Conference next week!
#highspirits #cannabiscommunity #californiacannabis #meadowlands
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Hey everybody, welcome to Episode 62 of High Spirits. I'm Ben Larson and with me, as always, is Anna Rae Grabstein. We're recording Thursday, october 3rd 2024. And we just got back from Meadowlands, anna Rae, for our audience. What is Meadowlands?
Speaker 2:Well, hi Ben, so good to be talking to you this morning.
Speaker 1:You as well. This is how our morning texts are. It's like oh, by the way, good morning.
Speaker 2:And hello to our audience. Meadowlands is I guess I would call it a legacy event in that it's been around. I think that it was the sixth Meadowlands, maybe Sponsored by David Hua and the team at Meadow Software, which is a POS software, but really it is a fall summer camp for the cannabis industry, hosted at Camp Navarro in the Mendocino Redwood Forest in the Anderson Valley, which is just the edge of the Emerald Triangle, kind of the southern edge, and it is a place where people that work in cannabis come together and talk about some of the most important things going on in the industry but also do things like stoned yoga in the morning and share meals.
Speaker 1:Sound that steams.
Speaker 2:Yeah, steams, all kinds of fun stuff. So it's a really lovely event that Meadow has been hosting really since adult use launched, and the announcement is that this year's uh will be the last california meadowlands, at least with a little bit of a hint that they would be moving it to the east coast where meadow has recently expanded their software offerings.
Speaker 1:but to be determined on that one yeah, being a california operator for the like last decade, uh, I've always felt like just a very tight tie to the roots, right to the emerald triangle, to the growers, to the legacy operators, and in the earlier days there was this big pushback against corporate cannabis coming in and I remember that tension right every time like more investment money would come in. There was this anxiety about the transformation of cannabis and I remember holding tight to it but at the same time realizing we do need to professionalize and it's like we can have the best of both worlds here. We can remember the roots and we can kind of build professional cannabis cannabis and being up in the red woods with a lot of our old friends from from the Northern California space and and beyond, I realized that I've kind of like lost touch with it a little bit. Um, and it was really nice to be back in it and it was this kind of.
Speaker 1:There's this weird thing going on in my head where it's like I really enjoy being here. I want to spend more time here. You and I both gave talks there, which we'll get into a little bit later, but I was also having this thing going on in the back of my head. It's like I'm having a hard time justifying being here for more than a day or two Because life is so busy, work is so busy and yeah, I'm still processing it because, I mean, Metal Alliance technically is still going on and we are here recording this and I kind of wish I could set aside, you know that, four days to be up there in the Redwoods. It is absolutely beautiful and rejuvenating and, yeah, there's a lot to think about and process when talking to the different operators that are still in it, still know being away from the Zoom calls and the spreadsheets, things like that, and team meetings in order to make time to connect is hard.
Speaker 2:I felt unsettled leaving to go to Meadowlands, but then, once I got there, I was like, oh, this is actually really nice, and one of the things that I feel most grateful for is that there were people there who I've known for six, eight, 10 years, but in a very superficial way, just seeing them in the industry and and the event gave me the opportunity to really go deeper and learn about who they are as people and what's motivating them.
Speaker 2:As, as cannabis continues to change and you know, I I think that it's totally normal for you not that you're asking for my feedback, but to have that push and pull of like, what is the right thing for me to be doing? Is this? Am I here doing business, and if I'm not, what am I doing here? And, at the same time, I would say that some of my biggest and most important business opportunities have come from moments that I could have never predicted, and so we give ourselves the freedom to do something that doesn't have a clear transaction value on the other side, but that might just get us into a place to have a conversation with the right person or to be exposed to a new idea. Then it's hard to keep growing as leaders and businesses and things. We have to do things without a clear outcome sometimes.
Speaker 1:Kind of like hosting a weekly podcast that we spend hours thinking about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, one of the people I talked to at Meadowlands was Brian Holler and he's the chief revenue officer over at Beard Bros, which is both a media company, which is how most people I think probably know them in the space, but they also do products and and I was joking with Brian that High Spirits, our podcast. There's nothing about it, that's a business, and he was giving me the side eye and was encouraging me to think bigger about it Business-ify, it Business-ify it, but I don't know if I'm really in it for that.
Speaker 2:I'm sort of in it for the community, kind of like what I went to Meadowlands for. I believe that there's magic that comes out of this and I hear from many of our listeners, when I do go and do events, people who will come up to me and tell me that they listen to this. So if you're those people like, please keep telling us that you listen to this and that it benefits you, because it means a lot. It makes us feel like this time, that we put in matters.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, and to that point it was kind of funny, Like so. So Tuesday night, when I was there, like there was a really impactful panel, like at dark candle lit. It was like super magical Um, and it was like, uh, it was what I might broadly describe as like an equity panel. There was, um, some, uh, some some folks that had been released from prison and had started businesses, um, some really famous cannabis famous um, you know people, um also a representative uh of of the tribes in California that have largely been shut out of the California cannabis system, um, and then that really got me to thinking again, going back to the roots, like why are we doing this and what are we trying to accomplish beyond capitalism? And then the next day, when I'm already back home, because I had meetings to take, one of the meetings was actually with Amber Center, who is now at Meadowlands, and so I was doing a Zoom call back to Meadowlands.
Speaker 1:And so I was, I was doing a zoom call back to Meadowlands and that meeting has been one of my most impactful and like meetings of all week, like we're just thinking about the hemp beverage category, which was what my talk was about and how it could catalyze. You know some, some, some equity support for businesses, starting in the hemp beverage category. Which hemp beverage is running up against this theme when there's lobbying going on about what is the hemp category doing for the equity movement, for reversing some of the impacts of the war on drugs, and it's just kind of cool to see this confluence and its new concepts. We've learned that what has tried to been done in the regulated markets has had very limited success. You know some of those success stories being on that stage on Tuesday night, but for every success there's been thousands of failures. And so, like, how do we increase that rate of success?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know the answer. I think it's really challenging, so I'm excited to let other people that are smarter in those areas come up with good plans. Well, so I'd love to debrief your talk a little bit at Meadowlands, if you would tell us about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, first off, again, just the magic of Meadowlands, like first talk I gave, wearing shorts and a t-shirt and a hat and with this amazing backdrop of Redwoods. It was just such a cool experience. And then again, like back in that realm of feeling like you're amongst your family, right, like these are the people that have been in the trenches together for years, decades in some cases, and my, you know, I booed and hissed myself as I walked up to the stage because the title of my talk was hemp beverages and hemp and regulated California cannabis are kind of at odds right now. Like there is this emergency ruling by Gavin Newsom and the California Department of Public Health recently that just really kind of set the tone. Kind of set the tone. But uh, the theme of the conversation was like hemp beverage, especially low-dose hemp beverage, is a incredible opportunity to normalize cannabis consumption and thc. And like when you talk to the consumers and you talk to the retailers, hemp beverage in itself is kind of a confusing label, like cbd beverages, like day trip and recess and zentopia, like those are hemp beverages but now we have the intoxicating hemp beverage category and so you know, I like you walk into a total wine and on the end cap and a big sign. It says THC infused. My THC is cannabis right, and so talked about the opportunities that have arisen, how we are seeing significantly different sales trends at the retailers in comparison to the often quoted 1 to 2% of market share in cannabis. Now we're talking about 10% to 20% in the alcohol market and what a huge difference that is. And how it is creating, yes, at times, strange bed partners, but also opening up conversations with policymakers on how this is a category that will very much exist in the mainstream and how we need to create space for it.
Speaker 1:And why this venue was really important to me is like these are the people that I personally need to win over. Right, this is my home state of california. We have legislative work to do in california and I can kind of set the stage and get an understanding of what are the talking points. And a lot of the talking points get down to tax parity, and I understand that the California cannabis industry is under the gun. We're at a 15% excise tax rate with the threat of it going to 19 in 2025, which is completely untenable, and the through tax revenue, reasonable tax rates and tax revenue on the hemp side of the business, especially around these beverages, there's, like this offset that can be created you can get parity without applying the exact same tax rate right, and so it's a nuanced conversation, but it has to be had. And so, like, how can both sides of the the coin uh work together to potentially lower the tax rate for the california cannabis operator and have a reasonable tax rate for hemp beverages? And um, that was kind of like.
Speaker 1:For me, one of the most important kind of outcomes of this talk is I had a lot of people come up to me afterwards Like all right, how do we have this conversation? Who's leading it? Where's the room, you know? And I said hold, please. I'm talking to my lobbyist on Friday and we're going to start scheduling these meetings because we do need to start having them. Like, 2025 is right around the corner.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that I get most excited about kind of winning the hearts and minds, of helping people to see that there is an off-ramp from low-dose experiences into the adult use market and this whole concept of these consumers that never materialized in the adult use dispensary space Soccer moms, canna-curious folks and having there be available cannabinoid products in places where those consumers already are, I think is a way to create comfortability and ultimately opportunity for everybody. But it feels so risky to adult use cannabis companies who have invested so heavily in the regulated space and are being taxed so much that that that uncertainty of like if if that narrative will actually materialize or if it's just a trick that the hemp people are trying to sell them to get them to come along in coalition, is it's.
Speaker 2:It's a bit of a toss-up and so there is some level of, um, of just surrender that everybody has to have, because we don't know for sure. But I I think that the the way that you're approaching it, of looking at, uh, forward thinking regulations that allow potency caps on the hemp side of the space is the only way that there's going to be any coming together, because that is the way that the cannabis-regulated folks are going to at least feel like there is clarity that the products are not going to be the same. As long as the products are the same in both markets, it becomes very challenging to build coalition.
Speaker 1:Well, so you bring up a couple points in my head. So one is that they don't have to remain solely in the regulated cannabis space. The biggest cannabis companies are showing us that if you diversify you can kind of hedge your, your bets. But the bigger point how I kind of started off the talk is that like and this actually really resonates with the legacy market right, like my north star is creating safe access to the plant as broadly as possible, like normalize, destigmatize, legalize, right, and if we can do all these things, like hemp and we're all in agreement that hemp is cannabis like we need to somehow be coalescing around that kind of like that that north star and you know that's hard, it's hard when your livelihood is is wrapped up into, like your current business.
Speaker 1:But all these early operators, especially in california, really duly do truly believe in in the power of the plant and that people should have access to it. So if you're on the hemp side, right, understanding that it's like we need to stop perpetuating this us versus them mentality and really be like, right now, it's us versus them, like that's just the nature of these, frankly, what these politicians created for us, and we need to work together to get to that eventuality, to that inevitability, where we are talking about cannabinoids hemp is cannabis, and that we do and have created safe access to the point, and I think people are ready for the conversation. It's just really challenging every time these battles come up and there's a lot of lobbying dollars and, frankly, the biggest companies are the ones that are most driven to protect their profits, and so I think the recurring theme throughout Meadowlands was people over profits, because I, I did you weren't there.
Speaker 2:on Wednesday morning, there was a panel of retailers, um, and there was a whole discussion about what are the metrics that matter most to your business and and in the end, it was profit. And I think that there's there's the whole construct that it has to be people over profit is is the wrong. That's the wrong construct. I know you agree with this. It's like people, because of like people with profit.
Speaker 1:It's really what we're trying to build. People with profit would be great. We need people and profit, because if we're not building something that's financially sustainable, then what we're building is in jest, and that financially sustainable than what we're building is in jest and um that, yeah, I guess I'm speaking more to the motivators about like, and how we speak to the point. Yeah, about the point, right, yeah um.
Speaker 2:But I think it's really important like when we're talking with california legacy operators to um stop trying to sell that impact story Like people are financially struggling and they need to make sure that they have a path towards being able to pay for their bills and support their livelihood. I don't think that people are under the assumption anymore that being a Emerald Triangle grower is the path to riches, but you want to at least be able to take care of your family, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. So, yeah, I mean we've talked a lot about hemp beverages on the show, so I think you know that pretty much covers it. You know it was great I got to show up with a cooler full of them and like hand them out to the crowd. I wish I had more. They disappeared quite quickly and it was great to see you in the crowd. I don't know, I don't know if I've ever given a talk where you were actually in the audience.
Speaker 2:It was pretty fun. I was a little late, I felt bad.
Speaker 1:But then on the following day, wednesday, you gave a talk, not about hemp beverages. So what was your talk about? And I'm so sorry I missed it. I was hosting a webinar at 830 in the morning, all good.
Speaker 2:My talk was about reinvention and reinvention of our businesses, our leadership and ourselves. This at metal lands because I think metal lands is a unique uh opportunity because so many of the people that have been in the california have been in the market. Um, it's not an emerging market where people are starting their first cannabis company like what we see in new jersey or maryland right now. People that are going in fresh that.
Speaker 2:We've got a lot of folks that have had many chapters of cannabis business experience, activism and in my work I help people devise new strategies for their business to figure out how to solve some of the hardest problems that are in front of them in their businesses. I think about how we can evolve their existing business to leverage kind of their best core strengths to do new things in the market. What the ideal partnerships might look like all of these different things but there's an underlying theme in that work of being able to do strategy with a team, with a CEO and a board or a management team that actually, before you can get to that table if you want to have the most effective strategic visioning session, planning session and then ultimately, the best execution of that strategy after you put it in place. There's some stuff that we need to all be working on in ourselves as humans first, so that we come to that table ready to get busy, and um, I just thought it could be a fun place to talk about that, so that's what I did.
Speaker 2:We talked about reinvention as something that is not done once, but that is a continual process that happens throughout our careers and throughout our lives as people, and I talked about some of my tips that I like to give my clients and the people that I work with and mentor about how we take care of ourselves first and then how that translates into leadership. So I guess, I throw some down now if you want to hear them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, well it's. It's funny. It's like you're saying all this and I'm thinking about my career and journey and you know I have often had to reinvent myself and sometimes it's gradual. Often it feels sudden when you have those actual career transitions, but everything is also cumulative and like how one piece really adds to who you are for the next stage. And even in Virtosa I remember one of my partners I'm not going to call him out, but kind of accused me of still thinking too much like a venture capitalist and that I needed to get into the business and get dirty. And maybe it was right. I took it to heart. Now I fancy myself a wartime CEO, but yeah, I don't know. That kind of really stuck with me, obviously six years later.
Speaker 2:That's what the continual process is about, and I and I say it because I feel like I've been in it, I've done it. I'm not sitting here reading some self-help book and telling people about it Like the chapters of my own career in cannabis have been through many different levels of reinvention and sometimes just having that reminder that we're not alone in that can be an inspiration and that trigger to just remind us to look back at our journey and to celebrate some of those wins, but also the losses. So many of the mistakes that I made on that path are the ones that I use in my daily life, every day, to help guide CEOs to make better decisions or to come up with an idea, because I've already tried something that didn't work some other way. So, yeah, I'd say I'll, I'll give you the top, the top of the funnel on. On the reinventing yourself part, uh, and that is getting out of denial.
Speaker 2:Um, almost every 12-step program, whether it's alcoholics or yeah, this is the first step, and I think it's the first step really in any self-reflection journey is to be honest with ourselves about what's really going on right in front of us. And if we're not honest and if we are denying what reality is, then we can't manage it, it becomes unmanageable, and so the first step is to make things manageable, and then, after that, some other tips that I was reminding folks about is continuous learning. Never stop growing our knowledge and skills and perspectives, and being open to shifts. Um, because the way that you used to think doesn't have to be the way that you think forever. Yeah, and I I see this even just in this hemp discussion that we were having um in myself in terms of the way that I looked at this as an executive at a cannabis cultivation company in California five years ago compared to how I look at it now, and I'm allowed to evolve. I'm allowed to look at things differently and have a different perspective.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one book I read over the last year that I really liked on this kind of particular topic was Adam Grant's Think Again.
Speaker 2:So it's just that that, that perpetual like repositioning of your, of your perspective, um, based on what you've learned, if you like, if you're holding on too strongly, uh to to where you're thinking about things today, you're going to become obsolete yeah, and and look, adam grant is someone that doesn't just work in cannabis, he works with business leaders and people, and every single different field in the world is highly relevant, but in our space in particular, like this type of thinking is just critical for folks to be able to stay nimble enough because it is not going to keep changing, it's not going to stop changing, it's just going to keep changing.
Speaker 2:And whether it is the next new regulation that not going to stop changing, it's just going to keep changing. Um, and whether it is the next new regulation that's going to roll down the pike, or it is the new uh cpg business that's going to enter and try to eat your lunch, or federal policy change like we are in for a wild ride for the next decade, like unquestionably so it's funny, all these all the common like business advice.
Speaker 1:I just imagine that in cannabis it's just always amplified and you have to move faster and be more nimble. Right, like I was talking with my team this past week about growth phases versus refinement phases. And in big business, in big like cpg and whatever it's like, those are long, big cycles, right. And it's like the refinement phases, like are, are long and in, like you know, people take their time reorging and but in cannabis you almost have to do it overnight. At times it's like, oh, we're in another growth phase, we need to grow while we can. It's like, oh, it's going back down, we need to cut things and survive and yeah, it's. It's just kind of wild this industry that we've chosen to operate in yeah.
Speaker 2:so denial, so getting out of denial, continuous learning, changing your perspectives, and then, on the back of that is self-care and health. So what that means is being gentle on yourself while all of this hard stuff is happening, giving yourself the space to realize that it's hard and that that's okay, but that you can do hard things. But also to take care of our bodies through all of this, because as entrepreneurs, as founders, as executives in hard spaces like we often end up sitting in our chairs all day at the computer Like we have to take care of our bodies because we have to be resilient, we need our brains to be nimble and the way that that happens is by being healthy.
Speaker 1:Um, so can I just real quick on that point?
Speaker 1:I got some advice from my mentor, uh, about a year, year and a half ago, that really kind of changed my perspective on things Like and as an executive also an executive with young kids it's very easy to suddenly find yourself putting yourself last.
Speaker 1:But he told me he's like it is your, it's part of your responsibility as an executive and it's part of your obligation as a leader of your family to get your ass to the gym and do what you need to do to take care of yourself, because you're no good to us dead and like. From that moment on I was just like it is as important as like meeting you at you know, 930 or 10am on Thursday mornings. Right, it's like it sticks in your calendar and like it just doesn't move. It's non-negotiable. If it does, if it does have to come off or there's a conflict, you move it, you don't eliminate it, and that has been really helpful to me and it gives you more energy, it makes you more present, like it, and hopefully makes sure that you're going to be here a little bit longer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is about not burning out right and like. If we want to go and win which is ultimately what we're talking about here is how we get to the process of getting to win, Like, we need to not burn out, we need to be healthy. And there's this saying of the way that people have described the evolving cannabis industry over and over the past few years that that we're building the plane as we're flying it right and it's.
Speaker 2:it's been said too many times, but I think that the relevant metaphor here is about putting the oxygen mask on first it's that we need to take care of ourselves, because by starting with ourselves and putting that oxygen mask on on this crazy plane that apparently we're building as we're flying through the air, um you know, then we can breathe, and when we can breathe we can help the people around us better.
Speaker 2:So that kind of is the self part, and then and there's more, but that's the overview. And then what that leads into is about reinventing our leadership, which is also a self focused exercise, but it's more focused on the business. Whereas I was talking about with self is really more about our own personal place in our world and in our narrative and our minds. And so the concept of reinventing our leadership is about evolving as leaders, because cannabis demands that, and leadership has to be dynamic and highly flexible and deeply connected to the people that we lead, and that the old models of leadership that was, top-down control and micromanagement they don't work in the space anymore, and that effective leadership and effective leaders need to be building trust, empowerment of others and adaptability throughout their organization. So how do we do this? And a mentor of mine once told me that leadership is 40% humility and 60% courage.
Speaker 2:I think there's probably a bunch of other things in there, but those two always stuck in my mind of humility and courage, courage being a little more important than humility, but, but humility being right there.
Speaker 2:And I think that this is the next piece of that creativity, of evolving our leadership, of being more dynamic in the way that we empower others, creating more empathy and connection, building mentorship, coaching and community into the teams that we build into our own leadership.
Speaker 2:So that's another piece of it is getting the support that we need as leaders as well, and it can be really lonely at the top, and especially in cannabis companies that have been forced to focus on bottom line and profit, which I think is highly appropriate, but that's also meant often that they have very small executive teams. Maybe there is only a CEO and not a whole bench of other C suite team members and CEOs can feel really alone, and so part of reinventing our own leadership is making sure that we have the support as leaders to be able to have the courage to show up at those hard moments. And we're going to. Our job is to be able to take in all of the ideas but ultimately to drive everybody forward with clarity, with clear communication. So, yeah, that's that's what the evolution of reinventing our leadership is about. I think there's a lot more I could say about it, but I'm not redoing talk.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm getting very much journey of leadership vibes from this. I you know, the beauty of having this, this event up in Mendocino, is that I had about five and a half hours of time on the road over the last couple days, so I got to make good headway on.
Speaker 1:on your most recent book recommendation oh good and yes, yeah, the the whole concept of balancing vulnerability but also be able to make quick decisions and like being able to show up in that fashion for your team, who wants you to be vulnerable but also wants you to be a strong leader. It's like sometimes it can feel like this dichotomy, but it's really important as a modern executive.
Speaker 2:And it's what you get from the gym back to that like health move.
Speaker 1:Exactly yeah, don't be overly reactional, but be decisive.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And so then the last piece. So we talked about reinventing ourselves, reinventing our leadership, and then that then we get to arrive at the moment of having the privilege, after we've done this self-work, to be able to reinvent our businesses, and and what that looks so many different ways in cannabis. I think that sometimes that reinvention is two companies coming together, and so two new teams need to be brought together and processes need to be integrated. Or we're reading every other day about different company that's in receivership.
Speaker 2:Maybe it's going to get broken apart, sold for pieces, maybe some new restructuring team is going to come in flip it around, or maybe it's just that you have a pretty decent business, but you want to figure out how to 5x that business over the next five years, and what does that mean? How are you going to get there? How do you make a choice? And so if you've come to the table with this great foundation that we just talked about, then I think that there's some really kind of key things that we can do when we talk about reinventing our business, and I'll talk about just three of the tips that I threw out at Meadowlands and I'm sure that people have other ones, but the first one that I like to always do first is to put the skunk on the table. That's what I call it, which is doing saying the hard thing. You name it so you can claim it.
Speaker 1:So I've never heard that phrase before but you know what it means, right?
Speaker 2:And the idea is is that there's always stuff that is toxic. That's challenging. It could be an unprofitable skew. It could be a dysfunctional member of the leadership team. It could be an unprofitable skew. It could be a dysfunctional member of the leadership team. It could be a location that underperforms more than all the others. It could be a piece of technology that just isn't up to snuff for what the company needs. Whatever it is it's, let's stop avoiding the thing.
Speaker 2:It kind of goes back to that point about denial. This is the getting out of denial on the business part. Let's put it on the table. Let's of goes back to that point about denial. This is the getting out of denial on the business part. Let's put it on the table. Let's say what it is, because then we can manage it. Then we can say, okay, how can this become manageable? How can we improve? Path to this? Because we've got to get over those skunks. We've got to get the skunks out of the room in order for us to get to reinvent and to grow and transform.
Speaker 2:And then the next one is about leaning into data. It's that when it's time for reinvention, often that's because the world isn't the way that it used to be, and those aren't always times that we should be relying on our gut solely. I'm not saying take instinct out of it, but I'm saying that, no matter what we do, when we're looking at reinvention, we should be able to find some data to support our decisions, and that is something that is more available to us in cannabis than it ever was before. There's more data companies, there's more tools for us to look at our existing data, but we want the data to support our choices and our strategy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then the last one is about building resilience as a company as part of your reinvention, because, like we talked about, this is not going to be a space that is predictable for a long time. There's going to continue to be changes, but there's going to always be opportunity within that. And for the folks that are willing to build that DNA of reinvention into their teams and into their strategies, with flexibility, but with competitive advantage and kind of refining, like you were talking about, whether it be your supply chain or your internal processes or who you are, whatever it is like, those are the people that I think are going to win and through that, just always coming back to what does winning mean here? How do we define winning? And making sure that everybody knows what that is. So, um, yeah, that's that's my feel on reinvention, that they gave it metal lands. I hope it's helpful to the folks out there that are um faced with it often, um, and most days.
Speaker 1:Well, if you're in the cannabis industry, I think you're faced with it often. You were talking about resilience and I'm like, well, nothing better to build resilience than trying to survive in this industry. Um, because at times, success is survival. I've heard that phrase probably 10 times in the last year or so. Um, actually, the last year has been pretty good, but the the previous couple of years, um, which, yeah, there's been many cycles.
Speaker 1:At this point for a lot of cannabis operators and you see a lot of, you see it in them it's like they're they're maybe not weathered on the outside, but definitely, uh, weathered on the inside. Um, yeah, I, I love it. And and to your your point about data, there's always data out there. You might think that you're thinking so far forward that this is new ground and just going with your gut, but it's built on data. You just have to think creatively about what's driving that. We had to do that with the beverage category. You know there was no reason to believe that the beverage category would exist for four years if you were looking at superficial data, but we were always looking beyond and looking at trends and like, talking to people and building that narrative, and so we could always fall back on like true data.
Speaker 2:Yeah, making your case somehow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you gotta rationalize it. Yeah Well, very good, I'm glad we both took the time to go. Apparently, it was the last California Meadowlands for the foreseeable future. I think it's done its job out here. I do hear that there might be whispers of a potential East Coast version, which we operate on the East Coast too, so maybe I can go that there might be whispers of of a potential East coast version which we operate on the East coast too, so maybe I can go out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and thanks to the whole team for having us. I think it was. It was a good time, we enjoyed it.
Speaker 1:Well, very good, and and and. While we were out gallivanting in the Redwoods, there was also life still going on. There was a vice presidential debate, there was news in the cannabis sphere. What's top of mind for you this week? What's what's been? What's been happening?
Speaker 2:I would say I didn't pay too much attention to the vice presidential debates.
Speaker 1:I mean, does anyone really? The one thing I remember from the last vice presidential debate was the fly on mike pence's head. That was the only thing I knew from that vice presidential debate there you go it.
Speaker 2:There was some big news that stuck out to me this week, and probably the biggest one is the that Statehouse has defaulted on their debt and that the Polaris Fund is seeking to place Statehouse into receivership. And for those that don't recognize the name Statehouse or don't know who this company is, Statehouse is ultimately what became of Harborside Health Center, which was one of the most important and impactful not first but largest and most celebrated medical cannabis dispensaries, where Steve and the fam would bring in politicians and tour them through and was really kind of an example of what legal cannabis could look like.
Speaker 1:So kind of set the conversation.
Speaker 2:Yep, absolutely, and it was started much before adult use in California. So it was part of the whole Prop 215 scenario, and that environment, which had no taxes and a lot less regulations not none, but almost none provided Harborside a lot of financial success and they got to do a bunch of really cool things, like they would offer free chiropractic and massage and acupuncture for their patients that were coming into the dispensary. They just did a lot of community oriented work and really gave back, and there was a number of years that they were the largest taxpayer in the entire city of Oakland as well, so they were also a major economic driver and Statehouse became the owner of Harborside after adult use cannabis launched in 2018. Harborside expanded into multiple other locations. Statehouse was formed, A number of other companies got folded up into Statehouse and ultimately, they have not been able to pull it off and there's an enormous amount of debt and I think that everybody in California is sort of watching, wondering what's going to happen next.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's too bad. It's hard to when you're in California. It's hard to immediately point the finger at the operator. It's just been a really tough state to make successful, especially at the retailer level. As you mentioned earlier in the show, it is the retail contingent that is fighting back against the hemp category most fervently. They're on that razor's edge perpetually. But it's too bad.
Speaker 2:I think in the end, harborside and the State House Group has some really great retail assets across the state and I believe and hope that they will continue to exist in some form through restructuring, will continue to exist in some form through restructuring and who knows if the Harborside brand will go on or what happens after all of this, but there's some really good retail assets in that portfolio so it's not going to go away forever.
Speaker 1:This is, for me, bringing up a very stretch of a segue, but I was just talking about this with my wife today. Uh, that the the port of oakland is going on strike, and and the ports on the east coast have already gone on strike, um which the last time this has happened. Apparently, the strike lasted 190 days. So if you are relying on goods coming from overseas through the ports, start shoring up your supply chains. We experienced some of these disruptions during the pandemic, obviously, but this is a workers driven strike that who knows how long it's going to last.
Speaker 1:I have heard that the Costco's are already starting to empty out of toilet paper, so it's starting to feel like COVID again. But I'm messaging to my team right now is like any ingredients that we get from Europe or otherwise, let's make sure that we stock up so that we can withstand any of these storms. So if you're listening to this, my advice to you as a business operator just make sure you're out there. So the segue was Harborside to the port, you know, did you? The segue was Harborside to the port, you know.
Speaker 2:Did you catch that? Yes, I get it, and Oakland's Harborside is very close to the port of Oakland, which is a big port for us. Yeah, this is fascinating to watch what's happening at the port and, you know, the unions have gotten their hands into cannabis and that's another part of the segue here is that it seems that this conflict with the port workers is about trying to keep automation out of out of the ports, and the workers want to to make sure that automation does not come to the port so that they can save their jobs and I have a huge problem with this yeah, yeah, it's, it's very, it's an.
Speaker 2:apparently, the automation that they're trying to fight against is already in place and in other ports around the world.
Speaker 1:This is such a I mean, this is such a boiler plate for fighting against progress in so many different ways, like I mean we, you're, you're, like you're fighting against inevitability. Exactly, I mean you're fighting against inevitability.
Speaker 2:Exactly Right. This is what I just spoke about. Regarding reinvention. Yeah, we can only deny what's right in front of us for so long before we accept it and start to just make it manageable should consider instead what comes after automation and what are the new jobs and the new innovations that will create opportunities for people as a result of of automation, because the job is really tough, though I mean there will change.
Speaker 1:It's really tough I I will not deny that like there will be certainly many periods of pain for many people because, frankly, it's like if your job is being replaced by automation, it's like, yes, we can talk about evolving the construct of the business and all that, but it is very hard to immediately adapt yourself if you don't have the skill set to operate in that environment.
Speaker 1:And so it's like where do you go? And and I think we're kind of seeing the impacts of that all over the place in the tech sector. We're seeing it because of the impact of ai. Uh, and I don't know if people are drawing it directly to ai right now, but I see a lot of formerly higher, high paid, you know, tech workers out there looking for jobs and and I'm just sensing it in general in the marketplace, like when we have a job opening out there, like the quality of candidates that we're getting is the best I've ever seen, which is great for me as a business owner, but it just tells me that, you know, there's not as many opportunities for them as there were previous were, because it's certainly not as competitive.
Speaker 2:Well, let's talk about one more news story. Okay, which, uh? Jeremy burke, who was my co-host last week uh, he did a fine job.
Speaker 2:By the way, if I ever fall off the face of the earth, jeremy, you got a seat uh, yeah, so in cultivated news this morning, uh, it was reported that Trulieve filed a defamation suit against the Florida Republican Party over what the cannabis company says is an intentionally deceptive campaign to mislead voters about the Amendment 3 ballot initiative voters about the Amendment 3 ballot initiative, because the Republican Party is campaigning against Amendment 3 and saying that if it passes, trulieve will have a cannabis retail monopoly and Trulieve says that that is defamation and is not the case. Pretty wild, this is an aggressive stance.
Speaker 1:I mean, after hearing last week about how much Trulieve had already been spending on lobbying and now they're spending on this suit, which I won't immediately pass judgment, even though I already have in my head, like I mean, this is politics, like welcome to politics, right. Which is just defamation, lit in Like how many suits are if? If this is viable, how many suits viable suits does trump have against them? Because of the way he talks about people? You know it's I'm isn't. It's like you, you get this big and you're trying to sway the direction of the laws and everything. Like I just don't get it.
Speaker 2:My mom always told me that that if someone's talking about you, whether it's good or bad, it's still good it's still good, you're big enough to be, talked about congratulations want to be talked about so that's.
Speaker 1:That's what my buddy said to me, uh, after my first lawsuit. He's like hey, at least you're big enough to be sued. Yeah, you've made it.
Speaker 2:Um, so I I get it. I think that this is all just part of a wild amendment ballot initiative process that we're watching unfold in Florida and they're just really trying to make sure that they win this election. I mean, you need 60% to win in Florida for this ballot measure to pass. They're polling at around 64%, which looks like they're winning, but they say that it's within the variance, so can't be sure. And they've spent 70 million plus dollars so far and they don't want to lose. So if I'm true, leave good on you.
Speaker 1:Maybe this is one of those things where you're sitting in court and you say something that you know is going to be objected to and sustained, but you just got it out, you got it into the ears of the jury, and so maybe this is truly just trying to get it out to the public to be like these people are defaming us, they're nonsense and trying to earn that couple extra percent to stay above 60 exactly I don't know. That's totally I'm trying. I'm trying to learn as we go here so someone at metal hands asked me.
Speaker 1:He's like are you, are you trying to get into politics? I'm like hell, no. Like oh, you'd be a good politician. I'm like I don't know how to take that you were offended by that statement Slightly. Yeah, because I know how I feel about most politicians. Yep, that's a tough one.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that basically that's the show. Guys, that's a good wrap.
Speaker 1:Yeah, good to catch up. I put it in the LinkedIn post this was the original motivation of High Spirits, was us just getting together weekly and catching up on the week's news. So it's nice to kind of revisit that and totally cover up for the fact that we just completely blanked on this week somehow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it happens. There's a lot of moving parts going on, but we've got some really good guests scheduled for us coming up. Several like next week right roundtable discussion the day after Benzinga, with a few CEOs that will be there with us, and our vision is to talk about the way that people are thinking about 2025.
Speaker 1:So stay tuned. Very exciting. I am thinking a lot about 2025 these days. Very good, all right, folks. Well, how do we do? We didn't have a guest, but each other. So Blue Banter with Anna Rae and Ben, you got it. Join us next week when we're in Chicago. If you're there, reach out, let us know, drop into our DMs. And thanks for always liking, subscribing and sharing us with your family, your friends, your coworkers, your dog. I still love it that my seven-year-old son listens to me every week. That's why I've been trying to keep it clean. I got to keep the E off of it. He points it out. He's like I can't listen to that. It has the E. So we're keeping it clean here at High Spirits Until next time, folks stay curious, stay informed and keep your spirits high.
