TrueLife - Weed Be Crazy Not to Listen – Jesse Redmond

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/🎙️🎙️Jesse Redmond is a visionary leader at the crossroads of finance and cannabis, shaping the industry’s future as the Head of Investor Relations and Business Development at LEEF Brands. With a career spanning hedge funds, investment strategy, and cannabis entrepreneurship, Jesse brings a rare fusion of financial acumen and deep industry insight.Before joining LEEF, Jesse made his mark as a top cannabis analyst and the founder of two hedge funds. He spent over a decade co-managing multiple hedge funds, allocating more than $1 billion across investment strategies and conducting 1,000+ due diligence visits worldwide. His career began at Franklin Templeton, followed by an early role at Fisher Investments, solidifying his expertise in global finance.In 2016, Jesse pivoted to the cannabis space, founding a Santa Barbara dispensary that quickly became the region’s #1 retailer. Recognizing the growing investment potential in the sector, he launched Higher Calling Consulting in 2020, guiding investors toward the most promising cannabis opportunities. He later served as Head of Cannabis at Water Tower Research, further cementing his reputation as a leading industry strategist.With a background that spans Wall Street to the dispensary floor, Jesse brings an unparalleled perspective on the cannabis market—one that blends institutional investment experience with hands-on operational success. Today, at LEEF Brands, he continues to bridge the gap between capital and cannabis, shaping the industry’s next chapter.https://leefbrands.com/Historical & Prohibition Parallels 1. “Cannabis is following the script of alcohol prohibition, but is the ending the same?” – We’ve seen this movie before with alcohol in the 1920s. The black market thrived, crime surged, and then the government reversed course. Do you see cannabis following the same trajectory, or are we in for a plot twist? 2. “If cannabis is the ‘new alcohol,’ where are we in the timeline?” – Are we in the speakeasy era, the 21st Amendment moment, or still waiting for the federal version of Al Capone to get busted? 3. “During Prohibition, people needed bootleggers. Now, they need financial analysts?” – How does the transition from backroom deals to boardrooms change the investment landscape for cannabis? 4. “If we put cannabis prohibition on trial, what would the closing argument be?” – Imagine you’re defending cannabis against federal restrictions in a high-stakes courtroom drama. What’s your case?The Future & Epic Potential 5. “What’s the Tesla of weed?” – Is there a cannabis company today that’s poised to do what Tesla did for EVs—disrupt, innovate, and redefine the space? 6. “If cannabis had a stock ticker in 1933, what would it look like today?” – Alcohol stocks exploded post-Prohibition. Should investors look at cannabis the same way, or is there a cautionary tale here? 7. “Cannabis in 2040: Will it be in vending machines, prescribed by AI doctors, or will it still be a ‘gray market’ in some states?” 8. “Will there be cannabis sommeliers?” – Wine has them, whiskey has them—do you foresee a future where cannabis connoisseurs have Michelin-star levels of prestige? 9. “Will cannabis replace coffee?” – With microdosing and functional cannabis, are we heading toward a culture where people start their day with a sativa shot instead of espresso?Federal Illegality & The Investment Landscape 10. “Wall Street vs. Washington: Who legalizes cannabis first?” – Will financial institutions force legalization before the government catches up? 11. “What’s the real reason cannabis is still federally illegal?” – Follow the money: is it Big Pharma, private prisons, or just political inertia? 12. “If cannabis became federally legal tomorrow, what happens to the market?” – Does it explode overnight, or do we see unexpected turbulence? 13. “How do you manage risk when the rules can change overnight?” – Investing in cannabis is like betting on a game where the referee can change the rules mid-play. How do you navigate that uncertainty? 14. “Does Big Cannabis become the next Big Tobacco?” – As cannabis scales, will we see corporate monopolization, or will craft cannabis hold its ground?Humorous & Wild Card Questions 15. “If cannabis stocks had a personality, what kind of person would they be?” – Are they the chill surfer, the Wall Street wolf, or the eccentric genius? 16. “What’s your elevator pitch to a 1920s bootlegger about switching to cannabis?” – “Forget gin, my friend. I’ve got something with better margins and less bathtub risk.” 17. “If Snoop Dogg and Warren Buffett started a cannabis hedge fund, what’s the first stock they buy?” 18. “What’s the biggest financial myth about cannabis?” – What’s the misconception that keeps investors from jumping in? 19. “What’s more likely: cannabis being federally legal in all 50 states or the U.S. having its first AI president?” 20. “If the cannabis industry had a soundtrack, what songs would be on it?” – A mix of ‘Smoke on the Water,’ ‘Because I Got High,’ and ‘Money’ by Pink Floyd?http://linkedin.com/in/jesseredmondhttps://x.com/jesseredmond?s=21&t=l-RuYzZ5-PN85Y-SxI7OMwhttps://leefbrands.com/https://x.com/higherexchanges?s=21&t=l-RuYzZ5-PN85Y-SxI7OMw One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark. fumbling, furious through ruins

maze, lights my war cry Born from the blaze The poem is Angels with Rifles The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Kodak Serafini Check out the entire song at the end of the cast Ladies and gentlemen,

Welcome back to the True Live podcast I hope everybody's having a beautiful day I hope the sun is shining I hope the birds are singing I hope the wind is at your back We've got a great show for everyone today. Jesse Redmond is a visionary leader at the crossroads of finance and cannabis, shaping the industry's future as the head of investor relations and business development at Leaf Brands.

With a career spanning hedge funds, investment strategy, and cannabis entrepreneurship, Jesse brings a rare fusion of financial acumen and deep industry insight. Before joining Leaf, Jesse made his mark as a top cannabis analyst and the founder of two hedge funds. He spent over a decade co-managing multiple hedge funds, allocating more than $1 billion across investment strategies in conducting thousands of due diligence visits worldwide. His career began at Franklin Templeton, followed by an early role at Fisher Investments, solidifying his expertise in global finance. In 2016, he pivoted to the cannabis space, running a Santa Barbara dispensary that quickly became the region number one retailer. Recognizing the growing investment potential in the sector, he launched higher calling, consulting in 2020. 2020, adding investors toward the most promising cannabis opportunities.

He later served as head of cannabis at Water Tower Research, further cementing his reputation as a leading industry strategist. With the background that spans Wall Street to the dispensory floor, Jesse brings an unparalleled perspective on the cannabis market and that blends institutional investment experience with hands-on operational success. Today at Leaf Brands, he continues to bridge the gap between capital and cannabis, shaping the industry's next chapter. Jesse, thank you so much for being here today. How are you?

I'm good. That introduction may be nervous. I feel old. I didn't realize they've done all that stuff. Well, congratulations, man. It's the lived experience that I think is contagious. And when you have that kind of lived experience in multiple arenas, it makes you very valuable, man. Maybe you could tell us a little bit more about some of the experience you've gone through so far, how you started and how you got here. Yes, I think like a lot of people that end up in cannabis, you have to take kind of a unique path to be here. And I think maybe it takes some unique experiences to have staying power in this environment. You know, it's been so brutal, George, for so long. You know, we're four years into this bare market. February 10th, 2025 was the four-year anniversary from when MSOS peaked on February 10th,

2021, it peaked at over $55 a share. And here we are at three bucks in change. So four years of torture for campus investors, 93% drawdown. And so I say all of that in the spirit of it takes a unique path to get here, but we're also seeing a lot of people drop out, just good people reach their breaking point, financially, emotionally, or just, you know, give up. And I think that's kind of where we are, the cannabis investing side is deep in what we call the trough of disillusionment, if you look at the Gartner hype cycle, and maybe we're going to enter the slope of enlightenment. We can talk about that a little bit. But yeah, we're in a hard time, but happy to share kind of how I ended up here. It's been a weird path. So I studied economics in college, and I always thought

I was going to do something in investing. I always love stocks since I was young. Graduated from UCSB and immediately moved to San Francisco. I worked for Franklin Teppleton, the big mutual fund company. I worked for Fisher investments when they had a billion dollars. Now they have $250 billion. And no, I did not get equity in that business, but it was a great experience.

Nevertheless, I moved back to Santa Barbara in 2005 to become co-portfolio manager of a fund called Santa Barbara Market Neutral Fund and Market Neutral Hedge Fund. I spun out of there to start my own hedge fund called Evolved Alpha with a friend of mine. That was an analyst under me at the first hedge fund. We got 50 million bucks from a family office and we're running a fund of managed account structure. We did that for a couple of years. I was focusing on the word called quantitative alpha return strategies.

So like short-term high-frequency computer-driven trading strategies. And I kind of thought that's where my career was going to be. I thought I was in finance when I was young, start my own hedge fund, which I did in my late 30s, which is, you know, just kind of through luck and working really hard as well. It was earlier than I ever thought, and I thought this found work for what was going to be a fantastic second half to my investing career. Might still be there, but took a detour along the way. So my dad, ever since I was a kid, has had health problems. He was involved in two really bad car accidents.

By the time he was my age, he never worked. again. So I'm 50. My dad was 48 when he got in a second car accident. So he never worked again. And that kind of trips me out to say that, right? Like, can you imagine being our age and just never working again? Like, what a bummer, what a shitty path. And the reason that he didn't work again, George, was because he got something called chronic regional pain syndrome. And what that essentially is a chronic pain condition that sends phantom pain all around your body. So your ankle hurts, your back hurts. Some days those wrist hurts. Go to the doctor, do all the MRIs, x-rays, all that sort of stuff,

and they don't see anything actually wrong with them. And so he went down the path of traditional pain management, which meant a lot of opiates, which gave him a lot of side effects and much relief as he would have hoped. And at one point, he was taking hundreds and hundreds of milligrams of MS cotton and oxycotton a day to manage the pain.

And he kind of figured out, well, this isn't long term where I want to be from a treating this condition basis, And so we started seeing a cannabis doctor in Los Angeles. And over the course of a couple of years, through using things like whole plant extract tinctures, great stuff from Papa and Barclay on that side, vaporizing flour. I got him.

His very own volcano. This is mine. I love it very much. But do you know what this is, do you know what this is? I don't know what it is, man. Okay. So what you do?

All right, guys, we're having a live demo here. Let's do it. Here is the device. I grind my flour. I put it in here. I turn on the device. It heats up a light bulb in here, which provides heat. I would turn the fan on, which is buttons down here. I put this balloon on top, and it fills up this balloon with flower vapor. And flower vapor, I like because it has all the cannabinoids and turpines you want, but it doesn't combust the plant material. And so it's a lot easier on your lungs. It doesn't smell as much. It doesn't leave my room smelling, which is great because I have kids.

And so I got one of these volcano vaporizers. Put it back. And he started vaporizing flour. And super long story short, within a couple of years, he went from taking almost 1,000 milligrams of oxycontin a day to taking none and using cannabis as his primary pain management tool. So I saw this go on, George, and things had changed with my hedge fund where the family the family to move to Texas to work internally.

I had kids in Santa Barbara. I couldn't move to Texas. So I kind of had to figure out what it was going to do next. Was it going to find something else to do in finance and stay in the Santa Barbara area? Or was there a chapter to my life? And seeing the change in my dad's condition coupled with at the time, we were in Prop 215, the California Medical, medical days for cannabis. We were moving toward adult use.

We knew it was going to be on the ballot. And I naively thought this was going to be a thing. it hasn't been great for cannabis businesses. And so I said, what if I pivot now? And pivot isn't even the strongest, strong enough word. What if I start over, which is what it was, absolutely starting over. I guess I was, what, 45-ish back then? So like in the prime of my investment career, completely started over.

I had a friend that was one of the top growers in Santa Barbara, worked with him, secured a bunch of product, did all the business stuff we needed to do, paid $500 for slot on weed maps, found a location for a store, and started a dispensary outside of Santa Barbara back to back 2016. And man, I can't have starting over enough and just how freaking humbling it was. Like, you know, you're at, you know, you're a hedge fund manager, you're making good cash, you're going on these, you know, I visited 22 different countries, you know, doing due diligence. Like, it was, it wasn't the pinnacle of finance because I wasn't George Soros. Let's not get carried away. But for me, I was, I was, you know,

further than I ever thought I would be. And to start the store over, I didn't know anything about cannabis. Like I spoke recreationally, but I didn't know anything about selling. I'd never even sold an ounce before. Never run a retail business. And I just totally, you know, I don't bootstrap is the right word, but just did it all myself. I, you know, signed up the first few hundred patients. I did the first few hundred deliveries. I made every buying decision on what turned out to be millions of dollars in cannabis. I built the menu. I learned everything, you know, learned everything I could. And that's really what got me into cannabis was the starting over after the finance career, thinking I wanted to do something different. And ever since I've gotten

into it, I've just loved it. Man, this is an awesome story. And it underscores how much medicinal value is there, not just with your father, but I'm sure along the way you had cannabis as an ally to help you do some dark times when you're starting over like that. Like there's a lot, you know, in my personal case, too, my wife has stage three cancer. And I've got, some really epic tinctures from people that allowed my wife to sleep at night. Brings back her appetite after chemo. So for anybody out there that says there's no medicinal value, man, it makes me so upset to hear that kind of stuff.

Oh, it's just naive and wrong at this point. And I totally agree with you. You know, seeing it, my dad is enough, but I saw it in hundreds of other people. Like, certainly there are people that had medical cards that just wanted to get high. But sometimes, George, I think if a person is using cannabis every day and, quote, just getting high, I would argue many of those people are treating a problem that they're just not aware of. So is it anxiety? Is it ADD? Is it depression? Is it a bunch of other mental health things? Do you have pain? I grew up. My dad was in the construction industry before I retire

at a construction company. And I saw those guys, you know, busting their ass, you know, every single day. But at the time they were 50, they were wrecked. What they did in Minnesota, George, that's where I grew up, was drink a six-pack on the way home. Maybe six, maybe six more once you get home. You get a 12-pack in you. You fall asleep. You make it to the next day. you do it over again. And how much better would cannabis be for those people? You know, so much better in terms of the pain management side, not being a poison, which is kind of nice.

And then also the next day, you can show up and actually be a human being again, as opposed to feel like shit all day and just hope to make it to the next six-pack. And so, like, there's no question that cannabis is medicine. Sometimes I think about what if we did it the reverse? What if we legalize cannabis, but alcohol was the one that was Schedule 1? We look at alcohol and say, this is an insane drug, right? I mean, people get in car crashes. They don't remember shit that happened the night before.

They wake up and they throw up. You know, you think about, you know, it causes cirrhosis. It kills hundreds of thousands of people a year. If that was the one that was Schedule 1 and cannabis was legal, we'd look at the drinkers and say, wow, those people are insane. Why are you doing that to yourself? And instead, we're bastardizing the cannabis consumer, which is making much more rational choice.

It's such a great point, man. And it's a great pivot point because there's so many parallels and so many sort of, you know, ways we can take this conversation when it comes to, alcohol. One that comes to my mind, and I don't love this, I don't love this analogy, but the idea of prohibition, you know, because I do think that alcohol is a drug that everybody does. And it's in a weird that we have drugs and alcohol. Like, why don't, why aren't they just drugs? Like, alcohol is a drug. We try to fix it like that. But yeah, I think that there's a lot to be said about the, oh, I'm losing my mic here. I think there's some interesting relationships between cannabis and

alcohol. Another one that I want to get your opinion on Jesse, and for the audience that they've been asking me is why is it like if you go get a craft cocktail somewhere like they talk about um they talk about hey this particular craft cocktail was made here here's like the tanins and all this stuff but when it comes to cannabis it's like this THC inflation maybe you could be down THC inflation and kind of give us a background like why is that why is that happening why is it so important what are people talking about yeah I think you started off right George where if somebody's asking me about the THC percentage the first thing I'm going to say is you're asking you the wrong question or that's just one of the

questions you should be asked right right um but what i often say is here in santa barbara we have a lot of wine tasting and we're done for great pinos here we've ever seen the movie sideways there's you know that was in santa barbara um so but a lot of wine wineries of my life and in those probably you know 100 plus visits i've never heard someone sit down and say which one which wine of yours is the strongest right never i mean i'm sure it has happened but they're all kind of 14 15 16 percent and right it's not part of it's not part of your buying decision you're with wine specifically you're in there for the taste you're in there for the experience the smells the turpines you know all that sort of stuff with cannabis somehow people have gotten tricked into just focusing on THC percentage

and um i don't think it's not like that metric is meaningless but we all know that's one of what dozens or hundreds of cannabinoids in there and the turpines you know matter as much if not more there's alcohols esters and a bunch of other complex things that i don't really know what talking about when I mentioned those, but I know they're in there, and I know all of that contributes to the experience we have when we consume cannabis. And so with me, I'm not looking for the highest THC product. You know, I consume cannabis at a regular basis, not a crazy tolerance, but that the lightest tolerance. So I want something strong, but how I know it's strong is I crack up in the bag of the jar and I smell it. I'm like, aha, that's the one because it has the turpines in it. And I know if it has a turpines,

it's not THC, and it's all going to work pretty well together. And so I think that what's happened is in the legal markets, that's the metric we put on jars, is the THC percentage. So somebody goes in and they say, I want to get the most high for the least money. That's general, not everybody, but that's what a lot of people do. And so then they say, okay, well, this one is $35 an eighth. That's 26%. This one is $35. It's 32%.

That must be the better one because I only see one metric on the jar. I see they both say OG Kush. I see they both say the name of the farm. This one is the higher number. That's the stronger one. boom, done. But when you consume it, a couple of things. Number one, THC won't determine how it makes you feel like the strongest one

won't necessarily be the highest THC. That one may give you the most anxiety. That one may be the most euphoric. That one may, you know, if you have certain conditions that like THC, that one may work really well for you. But if you're just looking to hang out in the evening, that might not be the one that makes you feel the best. And I wish we put turpines on the jar.

It gets complicated. Even percentage turpenes is helpful. And a lot of markets do have percentage of turpines, but only once you understand things like how much meersene, how much pining, how much limine, whatever it is, you know, these different ones and you figure out what you like. Then I think you can start to make better decisions. So in California and probably around the country, we're stuck in this candy, cookies, gelato's era, right? Like in California it was candy. Now it's candy gas. So make something that's like a runt, but put a little bit of a fuel finish on it.

That's the trendy thing. Extra points for making it turn purple, so it takes pretty pictures. For me, I don't like that stuff. I don't like the gilados. I'm sick of the cookies. I'm sick of the runts. I'm sick of the lemon cherry gilados. I'm sick of all of those.

I could literally never see them again. I like the older school stuff, especially OGs. And the reason I like the OGs is specifically because of the weight they make me feel. When I consume cannabis, I'm sitting back after work. I'm hanging out with my girlfriend. We're going to put a show on. We're going to relax. We're listening to some music.

We're going to hang out. Whatever the agenda is for the night. I like that kind of sunken back, a little bit of a couch lock, mental relaxation feeling. At 7, 8 o'clock at night, I'm not looking for something that's going to turn on my mind

and make me rethink every decision in my life, right? And that's kind of what the gelato's do to me for for some reason. It just gets my mind going and, you know, it turns into like an introspective experience, which can be cool too, but not what I'm looking for after a long day of work. I'm looking to kind of downshift a little bit.

So I think when we're talking about smoking, consuming cannabis in general, smoking, whatever, dabbing, eating, whatever your deal is, there is no one right thing. Different things make different people feel different. And some people, they'll use a sativa and actually calms their mind, especially people of ADHD. Some people use a quote, setiva, which this gets complicated here too, because sativa doesn't really define the effect. But for this conversation, we'll make it simpler and we'll say it does. Most people, a sativa stimulates, but some people, because of the way their body works,

the sativa calms them. Things labeled Indica, we generally associate with more couch lock, more relaxing, when really everything is a hybrid of the middle, right? Because there's very few land race strains that they've all been, you know, cross-bred to each other. So my advice to people when they're looking at cannabis or trying cannabis is, A, start with an appropriate dose. You know, when I talk to somebody and they say, man, I don't like weed. It's usually followed by a story that makes me think they use too much.

They ate too much in edibles. They smoked a three-foot bong hit, which they had no business engaging in, right? But if you find your dose, so start out with five milligrams, start with two milligrams on edibles. You can always eat more, right? But you can't eat less. And so if you start with 20 or 30 or 40 or 50, then you might have a bad experience. On the flower side, don't go for the highest crazy THC thing. If you're in California, find some good greenhouse, outdoor, sungrown, find something that's maybe high teens type THC. Scale into that, see how that works for you. Try something. I love this paradigm that Kevin Jodry talks about, where he talks about having your fruits and florals and your earthy and gasey and gasey strains.

And so the fruits and the florals tend to be more uplifting, whereas the earthy and the gassy ones, the fuel ones tend to be more sedating. So if you're smelling a jar of flour and you smell it kind of funky, your skunkier, earthy, gassy fuel like an OG or a sour diesel, that's generally going to put you down a little bit more. Your fruits, your florals, those are going to generally be a little bit more uplifting. There's exceptions to these rules. But I think it's all about trying to figure out what works best for you. And what this person over here likes versus what I like, they could love the gelatoes. I could love the OGs. We're just, A, might be looking for two different things, and we're two different bodies. So they may be impacting us differently.

Man, I love talking to you, man. That's a lot of information. and a lot of good information for people to kind of wrap their minds around. You'd mentioned like outdoor and indoor. There seems to be like a pretty big debate about soils, man. I was wondering if you could uncover some of that for us. I got some friends that are like, man, if it's not growing outside, it's fucking dog shit, you know? Or some people are like, listen, man, this red light I'm using over here. What's the take on soils, man?

I mean, you have live soils, dead soils, hybrids. Can you break that down for us? Yes, I don't think there's one right answer to that question. I think there's awesome indoor, right, that's grown in salts in. in rock wool or cocoa, right? That's the way most of the big legal grows are, right? You go in there, they've got these rock wool cubes. Sometimes they put them in cocoa, which is cocoa huss.

They use a hydroponic system where they drip water, nutrients on them all day. The nutrients are what we call synthetic, right, dry from salts, and they'll have their different ratios depending on where you are in the grow cycle. And that's how most of it's grown. And I've seen some really shitty weed grown that way, and I've seen some really awesome weed grown that way, right? Just like if I throw a carpenter, two carpenters into a garage with the same wood and the same tools, they're going to build drastically different things.

Same thing on the cultivation side. If I give you the same cut and I give you the same ways to grow it, we're still going to end up with really different results. So I don't think it's a right or wrong thing. I think you can get great examples, you know, great output on both sides. Personally, where I lean towards, and maybe that's because of, well, I won't poison it that way. I'll say personally what I lean towards is I like sungrown and I like grown in organic soil. To me, that's what produces the most flavorful flowers. I don't have any data to support this.

I don't think data exists to support this. I think sometimes cannabis is a qualitative experience. And we could get really hippie, George, and talk about the intentions of the person that grew it as well if we want to get into that kind of stuff. And I think there might be something to that, right? Because the best lead I've had is from, you know, friends that might have a small, hoop house might be growing, you know, a few dozen plants and they're out there every day with them. They're playing music. They're touching them. They're doing all those sorts of things. And so I love weed that comes from, yeah, soil I like, sun I like. And probably my favorite

is greenhouse grown, you know, whether that's a summer light dapper, or whether that's, you know, a fall harvest of a greenhouse. Because the greenhouse gives you some coverage in terms of, you know, getting some of the dust and other things, you know, on the plants can provide a little bit of protection from the sun as well on some of those brighter days, but you still get the sun-grown feel from it. So for me, probably greenhouse and soils, my favorite, full outdoor too, but you just don't see a ton of it, right? Because most of that goes to extracts these days, but full outdoor, it can be fantastic as well. Generally, it won't look as good. One of that bag appeal that we all, especially the kids like to see, but in terms of just being awesome flower, can totally get

outdoor. Most of what you see on the shelves these days is, especially outside of California, is indoor. Indoor can still be awesome and some of the best flower of the world is for sure indoor. Certainly some of those beautiful flowers are indoor because of a controlled environment. But the amount of electricity it takes to grow indoors is just astounding. So sometimes I get bummed out. Where I get really bummed out is when someone grows shitty indoor, right? That's like the worst cannabis in the world is shitty or even mediocre indoor because you spent so much time and money to grow it and all the electricity you used. Then you came out as mediocre product. I think that's the real, you know, the real crime or the bad indoor grows.

But yeah, that's kind of my perspective on it. I don't think there's a wrong or right answer there. I like the soil grown with the soil and sun, you know, is what I like best. But I have a jar of B-T-Y-O-G over here that's grown indoor. That is just absolutely one of the best jars I've ever had. And if you want to get even nerdyer on it, you can talk about on the indoor side. Is it HPS or LED right? Because this B-T-Y-O-G is a cut from, I don't know, early 2000s that I want to say,

an OG from California. And it was bred and grown under HPS, right? Because we didn't have LED back then. And sometimes when you try to grow these older strains, your glues, your OGs, your sours that were bred under HPS and you throw them under LEDs, they're not super happy. And so I think that's one thing that's kind of interesting, too, is this evolution from HPS, which takes more power than LED runs hotter than LED.

So most people are going to LED, but some of the old strains are cultivars, as the nerds call them, don't do as well under LED. So it's kind of fascinating. You have full sun, you have greenhouse, even have mixed light, right? Where you have the greenhouse with the lights in it. Then you go to the indoor side with the lights, and then you can break it into HPS and LED. So there's a whole bunch of different ways to get there.

All of them can produce great flour, I think. Man, it's so deep. I think it begs the question, too. If you talk about something that was bred with HPS and then move to LED, would the same sort of characteristics hold for something that was born in Afghanistan and moved to California? Yeah, I think that's where it gets tricky. And I think that's why it's helpful sometimes to do rooms of just one strain, right? Sometimes people want to put three or four strains in a room and what the OG likes,

the gelato might not like what the gelato likes the cookies might not like just to make stuff up here. And so I think you need to dial in your rooms. And friends that I see growing super fire stuff like that VTY OG over here is, is because they've been growing it over and over again. They've grown it for years. In this case, you know, almost two decades, this guy's been growing the same O-G. So they get it really dialed in.

You know, what does it like for nutrients? What is it like for lights? How long does it want to go, right? Because some strains will go 55 days in flour. Those are a quick flip. So a lot of people like those because you get more turns on your harvest in a year. If you have shorter ones, but sometimes your GMOs, your chems, those want to go 70 or 80 days.

You've got to be more patient with those. So, yeah, I think it takes, I think every strain needs something different and it gets super awesome at growing it. You've got to dial in each room, but also you've got to grow it several different, several times in order to really get that down. Do you forecast a future where like, is, first off, is GMO a dirty word in the world of cannabis? You know what I mean by that? Like sometimes you would, people are bred to think like, hey, GMO is this?

It's modified. It's this. It might be modifying your body on some level. But is that the same sort of behavior people have towards cannabis? Is GMO a bad word in? cannabis. Oh, so when I say GMO, I'm referring to the strain GMO. Okay, all right, all right. Yeah, yeah. So that's, some say it stands for garlic, mushroom, and onions. It's kind of a funky, heavier, earthier, kind of OG flavor. It's an OG with,

shoot, I used to know what it was, but it's like a camoge type flower. That's called, that's called GMO. It's really popular in the Raza world because it washes really well the hash. It yields really well. But yeah, GMO is a strain I was referring to, not a genetically modified organism. You know, let's talk about, as we segue into, like, planting a little bit. Sometimes I've often wondered, like, so many plants grow in their own ecosystem. Like, this tree likes to have these mushrooms with it, you know? And, like, do you know anything like that for cannabis? Like, instead of just monoculturing this one breed here and there, do you know any growers,

or are you aware of any strategies that you can grow cannabis alongside with other plants, either with them directly or on an off cycle? Yeah. And I know people that grow will listen to this and be like, this guy doesn't know what talking about so i'm going to admit here i don't know what i'm talking about because i haven't done this but i have seen people planting other things uh alongside you can even do cover crops of stuff right of 10 labs if you want to check super cool they do indoor living soil which is really fascinated in because usually with living so living soil you don't see a ton of usually if so it's done outdoors

or greenhouse and instead they have these uh indoor beds which are indoor soil beds are rare because like i said usually it's cocoa or hydro on the soil side of rock wool And so 710 labs, which is a, I think they're in California, Colorado, and a couple of other states. One of the top companies for flour and for hash. And they have some rooms, which are the living soil indoor, you know, tons of different worms. But they are also co-planting stuff there. And I don't know exactly what that is or exactly how that works. But my understanding is that there are some synergies there.

But that's a little bit above my pay grade. Yeah, I don't either. I just hear some really cool stories about it sometimes. You know, it seems like over at Leaf, like you guys have, you guys are top dogs over there, man. You're like the biggest in California. Is that the Tesla of weed? So we are in Leaf. Biggest in California on the extraction side, maybe.

So certainly Glass House Brands, right, is the largest company in California by market cap and we're a fraction of their size. So credit where credit is due there. Where we're at Leaf Brands is that we're one of the. if not the largest extraction company California. So if you look at about a $4.2 billion market in California, about 48% of that are things that use concentrates. So think vape carts, right, because you could put distillate,

live resin or rosen in the vape cart. So that's huge. Edibles, same. Edibles, some use distillate, some use librazen or rosen, tinctures, beverages, everything along those lines. Those use concentrates.

That's about 48% of the market. The other 50, 52% is just, you know, things that come in jars like that, and then pre-rolls, which are getting more popular, especially the smaller ones. And we can play a little bit in the infused market because we can make the diamonds, the distillate, the bubble hash, the rosin that would go an infused pre-roll. So think of us at Leaf as participating about half of the categories in California's $4.2 billion legal market. We have a 15,000 square foot extraction facility in Willits, California, which is by Mendocino. And we do hydrocarbon, which makes live resin and cured resins.

We do ethanol, which makes distillate, and we do solventless that makes rosin there. So we have three different lines there. And where we're going to get even more unique is this year we're planting something called Salisbury Canyon Ranch. And this is a 1900 acre, what we call it a ranch, that we purchased a couple of years ago. It's in Santa Barbara County. has 187 acre land use permit for cannabis, 100 acre permit for hemp, and this year we're planting the first 65 acres on the cannabis side. And when it fully scales over the next couple, two or three years,

up to 187 acres, the hemp piece as well, it'll become one of, if not the largest cannabis farm in the world. And the reason we're doing this, George, is because this is the way to boost our margins by growing our own material and this way to improve our products by growing our own. material. So think about a field out there, 65 acres. I'm just going to make some numbers up here, just for an example. Let's say we plant half, about 30 acres of that for whatever strains will work well the best for distillate. And we plant over here. Over here, we plant the strains that'll

do best for the hydrocarbons, the live resins and the cured resins. Then over here, we plant strains that will work well for solventless into razzed. And so we end up with different sections of the farm designed for our different extraction lines. Each one, we plant, we'll work. One will be optimized, the strains that are popular, the strains that give you the highest yields. And so through that, we're going to boost our yields. Our cost of goods sold are going to drop by about 40% by doing it ourselves. And it's going to be a pretty big opportunity for us to pair extraction facility, Leaf Labs, which we've been running for years.

And now just this year, we're starting to grow our flower. So, yeah, really excited, big year for us. Man, congratulations. And to the team over at Leaf. Like, it's so amazing to me. Like when I think about the laws, and correct me if I'm wrong, but if it's, it must be insane to run a business, but not be able to have the write-off. Like, that's crazy, right? Yeah, so that's a part of being a plant touching operator, the U.S., your, you know, traffic in a Schedule 1 drug, subjects, makes you subject to the 280E tax code, which prevents you from taking ordinary deductions.

So think about that as paying taxes on gross profits rather than net profits. So all your normal selling general admin expenses, things like rent employees, all of that stuff, you don't get to deduct it. You instead pay on your gross profits. And what happens, George, is that for a lot of cannabis business, that just about doubles the effective tax rate. So not only do we have this crazy structure where each state has its own system and some states like California have crazy taxes across the board. So you're subject to all the California taxes. Oh, you want to go set up at another state? You can't just ship your products there, right?

You've got to go and replicate. Like, one of the things you want to do at least. because move into another is moving to new states, become a multi-state operator rather than a single-state operator. So think if we, we'll just pick New Jersey an example. If we go set up in New Jersey, we have to replicate leaf labs in terms of all the equipment, staff, operating standard operating procedures,

all of that stuff to build a leaf labs in New Jersey. But we also have to source all over our material from New Jersey and sell it all to relationships in New Jersey. So you have to replicate the full California business model, just like you're moving to another country, essentially, in every single state. So for the multi-state operators that are in a dozen different states, they have 12 different businesses that are running across the U.S.

And so, yeah, it's a really clunky system where you have the states. Every state has its own rules. Usually the states are taking a lot of taxes themselves. And then on top of that, the plant to U.S. operators are subject to that 280E tax code we're paying taxes on gross profits. And so it's really punitive and super hard right now. And I think that's why you see cannabis companies have a lot of debt and a lot of upside down ballot sheets because in this regulatory structure,

it's not possible, but it's really difficult to generate cash flow and generate net income. But the good news is that we're in this rescheduling process. It's being proposed to move cannabis from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3. Schedule 3 removes that 280 e-tax burden and we'll free up more cash flows. If you think about George, it sounds like we're asking for something special, we're not like the electric vehicle guys who are saying give us credits, right? are the solar guys of getting all these kickbacks. We're saying, hey, can we be treated like a normal business, please?

Like, we don't want anything special. We just want out of the penalty box. Would that be possible, sir? And it's been a real bitch to get there, right? And it's taking forever. But still hopeful rescheduling gets done by the end of the year. You know, not certain about that, but, you know, hoping they could sound by the end of the year. And then we'll start being treated, at least in a tax basis like normal taxpayers.

Yeah, I think there's such a huge community I hear that is pulling for that. And on the front lines and writing their congressmen. And there's a big group of us that are really trying to help to help make a difference. On some level, it has to make you guys meaner and leaner, though. Like if you're going to be able to function in this right now, if it were to lift this 280E, like I think you guys would be really set up to help out a lot of people, man. Yeah, we've been forced to operate really efficiently and find religious around, you know, cash flows and budgets.

And I think in the early, quote unquote, green rush days, especially going back with like 2018 in Canada and even early 2020s in the United States, you saw businesses that were overspending and weren't particularly responsible with shareholders' money. And I think over the last few years, as profits have come down, we've been waiting on rescheduling, been waiting on safe banking, we've been missing new states opening like Florida. It's made everybody because revenue growth has been slower. The way that you can improve your business in the meantime is becoming more efficient. So I think you're absolutely right there that having the business is optimized for a super hard

environment like we've been in. Let's keep that same energy in terms of being optimized once things improve because then you'll have super profitable businesses, right? Because 2025, not necessarily for leaf brands because we have a lot of independent cool stuff going on, but for the industry at large is going to be a lower growth environment. For most of the big MSOs, your cure leaves, your GTIs, your Varonos, your Cresco's, your true leaves, top five, but we often call the tier ones. They're generally expecting like five to 10 percent growth this year, kind of mid to high single digits. So lower growth. And in a lower growth environment like that, if you want to improve your financials, you need to become more efficient.

So the business has gotten really efficient. There's more room to go there. But now, the exciting part, which you're smartly bringing up, is let's keep that efficiency, but now tack on the revenue growth and maybe get a little bit of regulatory reform help finally. And that will present a lot of opportunity for profits because we're coming into that lien, which I think is a good place to be. Let's talk a little bit about culture. Like, you know, all of us were probably at some level drawn to cannabis or psychedelics on some level because of the culture and you become part of this culture. How have you seen the culture around cannabis change? Like you've, you've obviously built a relationship as a younger man with recreational and now you find yourself

in financial. How do you see the culture changing around it? Like, is it still this huge thing at musical festivals and is it daily for people? But let's talk a little bit about the culture. What do you think? Yeah, that's a good topic. Yeah, culture is really important to me. And at times, moving into this legal world, I've struggled with where I fit. And let me explain that a little bit. So I come from what would be perceived as a suits corporate background, right? That I college, I studied business economics.

I worked on Wall Street-type firms. And my background was on the investment side. So if you want to be really mean, George, you can call me a, corporate chat right that's the to rock it for a tournament but but but but but all throughout that time you know as you dead shows and fish shows and almond brother shows a bed to my fair festivals i've done my share of you know fun substances and it'll be a big believer in psychedelics and cannabis for my whole life not something i pursued professionally that's what i talked about all the time but you know i was more often than not you know preferring those things over alcohol for most of my life and felt

more of a connection, you know, to that, to that community. And then when I shifted to running the dispensary, this was back in the medical days. And it was a lot of more roots people and less suits people back in those days. And the people that I got started with on the medical side are people that had been growing a long time and people that weren't real big fans of rules and systems. And people that sometimes had, you know, done, you know, time are. their life had suffered because of the plan to people that really, really fucking care about cannabis. And in often case, that means they care about, you know, psychedelics as well.

And that really resonates with me. Some of those people that I'm really good friends with have chosen under California's Prop 64 system because they can't get in it, right? They don't have a million bucks to open a dispensary or a grow. They don't have two years to be on the sidelines waiting for that to happen. So a lot of good friends have been forced into continuing what they're doing on the medical side, which now, you know, we call it a black market or I call the traditional market. And I feel still a connection to those people because I think that a lot of people have gotten left behind. I think that's bullshit.

And I think painting everybody as black market and a bad person because they got left behind, they can't fit into this crazy California system. I don't think that's fair. And so I think this is true of leaf brands too. Like our CEO, Micah, you know, he's bed in jail for cannabis before. He's had his ups and downs, you know, on the traditional market and in the legal world. He was growing in, you know, Mendocino for, you know, a decade or more. And that goes deep into the whole team at least legacy people that converted to the legal side.

But that's kind of where our roots are. And that's one of the things that I love about it. However, I contrast that with the fact I have a skill set that works well in the legal world. And I don't have a risk tolerance that works well for the traditional market, right? So I'm 50. I've got two kids. And so spedding the rest of my career on the traditional market side isn't really an option for me just because I can't take that kind of risk or don't have the risk appetite for it. And I also have the financial background, which there's more for me on the legal side. And so it's all a long way of talking about culture.

Because I feel like in some ways, like the people I really resonate with, a lot of those are still on the traditional market side. not everybody like you have great guys like micah like ted from alien labs you know kailip from connected like um you know guys in the jungle boys have have moved over um and so there are some people that are kind of the old root side that have come to the legal side and that's awesome but i definitely still feel a connection to the culture and i think that's because i'm one of the people on the legal side especially that one of the people on the finance investing part of the legal side that still really cares about the plant. I could have a lot of these conferences and people there are not cannabis consumers and

that's fine. People there haven't grown a plant before and that's fine. Some people there, George, ask me how many grams are in an eighth because they don't know the answer to that question, which tells you they've never bought a sack of weed before. Right. That's fine. But those, I like those people, but those aren't really my people. My people are more on the people that really love weed side and I like putting those two pieces of the puzzle together. Like I love the business side and I can advance a business and help my career there, but I want to do it. still keeping some authenticity and really caring about the outcome because I because of like what I've seen with my dad right like I I know this plan can help a lot of people and so I think that kind of

brings the passion to me yeah it's it's really well said and I see the same thing in the psychedelic markets too you have all these people that have never even done mushrooms or tried LSD but they're over here trying to help people guide them through these ceremonies or something like that's like man you've never even tried that like it's it's so interesting to me to see that dichotomy there and There's, let's, let's go back to the hippie a little bit, man. I love this idea of intention. And I want to tell you about a really cool program, my friend Tess Bersinski, who's, she's an incredible mycologist.

Like, she's been helping people not only with psilocybin, but like teaching them to grow psilocybin. And you start thinking about it, like, wow, how can you help someone growing? And you think about the process, probably the similar for cannabis as well. But like when you're growing psilocybin, there's a good chance that psilocybin can get infected. You got to throw out the whole batch. But what does it mean when it gets infected? Hey, it's around the wrong stuff.

It's in the wrong area. It doesn't have the right sort of, you know, environment. Same is true of the individual. Like if you're in a bad environment, maybe you get infected. Maybe you start getting some mold on you. Maybe your life's not going the way. You've got to throw that decision out. But there's so much that can be done in the holistic process, whether it's cannabis or psychedelics, in that growing process.

I argue that you as an individual can grow if you start growing some stuff. What do you think? Yes. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of thoughts there. So on the cannabis side, I think it was 2015 when I started helping my dad grow some plants in 2016, where I got more into it myself.

So that makes about eight, nine years that I've been growing myself. And yeah, it just drastically increased my connection with cannabis. It's, I'd say, you know, it's 25% of what I know, 50% of what I know now is from that hands-on experience. It's doing things wrong. It's failing. Like it's, you know, feeding them the wrong things. Like we talked about, you know, salts versus organics. Like I've tried both of those.

You know, we talked about, you know, soil. I've used big pots and small pots. We talked about different strains. I've grown this and that and figured out which ones are more mold resistant, more pest resistant, which ones work, you know, best in my environment out here. And one of the things that it did for me is that made me start thinking a lot about more, a lot more about what I was putting in my body. And so I saw how different the cannabis reacted based on what I put into it.

And I said, shit. I bet that's happening to me and I'm just not tuned into it enough. And so I got a little bit more tuned into it. I got a lot more tuned into it. And I can see it like every Saturday morning. I go to the Santa Barbara Farmers working with my kids. And now I'm getting my spinach. I'm getting my carrots.

I'm getting my dates. I'm getting all the, you know, all the, you know, like these organic peanut butter. And I'm getting all this different stuff. And I don't know that I would be there in doing that if I didn't have the experience, experience with cannabis and seeing how much it mattered, how I treated the plants. And that's permeated, you know, other parts of my life. Like I drink way less. Like, you know, I was a, when I lived in San Francisco and was doing that thing, you know,

we're going out two, three nights a week and I'm having a couple beers on the other nights. And that's just not my life anymore. Like, I'm not saying drinking as, you know, optimates, but I would have a couple of drinks, you know, a couple times a month. And just, you know, have kind of really tuned that out of my life and found other ways that make me feel good without the downside. So I think that's for sure true. the cannabis side.

The psychedelic side to me is just a magnified or amplified version of that. Like to me, mushrooms, let's just talk about that, for an example, are way more profound than cannabis. Like cannabis has this, you know, medical value for a bunch of different things. And so you have all these dozens and whatever it is, hundreds of different conditions, right, from Parkinson's to chronic pain to seizures with kids, right? And so you see this broad application of it, like maybe, and I could be wrong here, but I feel like with psychedelics, those talk about mushrooms, because that's where most of my experience lies, that for certain conditions,

and maybe it still is pretty broad as I think it through, but it can just be so profound because cannabis won't change your life with one dose, right? Cannabis you're using on a regular basis, and it can improve your life. Maybe use it on a regular basis, but it's there for when you need it. but I don't know that many people that smoked a joint and said that was one of the three most amazing experiences in my life. Whereas if you take a meaningful dose of mushrooms, let's just say that you sit down, you have what they use in like the Johns Hopkins study, which is a little eighth. If you want to get a little crazier, which I don't recommend, you know, go up to your grams, your quote unquote heroic dose. But just use an eighth like they use in a lot of the studies.

And I don't remember what the data was from the Johns Hopkins study, but almost everyone that participated said it was one of the most profound experiences in their life. And there was some amazing stat, which I can't remember offhand too. But the amount of people that they interviewed the partners of those people that did the John Hopkins, Johns Hopkins psilocybin treatments. They interviewed like their wives or significant others afterwards. And one of the questions was, have you seen them change as a person? And every single one of them said they were a nicer, kinder person. They felt like a different person afterwards.

And that's from one experience. That's from call it five hours, right? That's from spending a day. That's just fucking amazing, right? And somehow we've made that illegal. And it's probably a longer conversation that we can get into today about why that is. But yeah, I think psychedelics, it's tough from an investment standpoint because it's not clear what the business model is around it. You know, if you think cannabis is painful in terms of the regulations, it seems like psychedelics is a lot more painful.

Psychedelics, George, also may be tricky because sometimes one dose or three doses is a, all you need. So how does that business model work versus with cannabis? You could dose it daily or weekly or monthly, but on a regular basis. Like in my cannabis business, it was 20% of the consumers that were buying 80% of the products. And those are your apex stoner that's smoking an ounce of flour or weed. That's what drives the weed industry. And so they're buying that ounce every week. They're spending two, 300 bucks every single week on that. With psychedelics, you know, you can microdose, but that's pretty pricking affordable in most cases. If you macrodose, especially with, you know, something like mushrooms, if you get them yourself,

you're talking about less than a $50 investment. I'm not telling you to do that. You can go to a treatment center in Oregon and pay $3,000. That's another option. I think those prices are coming down. But, yeah, man, I think the psychedelics thing, I kind of pause when I talk about it. It is so meaningful and it is so profound. It is kind of think back on the ways of times that it's been helpful for me in terms of

reframing your life, resetting your life. You know, someone made this analogy that, I think it was Joe Rogan, that you think about sometimes when you're skiing or even think like a bobsled track, you get those grooves. You're following those same paths, right? Because that's what you've been conditioned to do. You go this way. When you take a meaningful dose of psychedelics, sometimes it's like fresh powder. And you don't have to go down that path anymore. There's a whole bunch of fresh options available to you could ski over here, ski over here, ski over here, and that's the way you can really change your life. And so I think psychedelics are amazing. And I think around a lot of this stuff, it is going to be

mindful of what your intentions are. And so psychedelics, for sure, write down three things you one out of this. Be super dead honest with yourself. Why are you here? What are you struggling with? If you're sitting down with a meaningful dose of mushrooms, especially by yourself or in a therapeutic context with others, you're there for a reason and don't be shy about what that reason is. And I think that's why the good ayahuasca centers, right? They do all that pre-work to try and really say, what are we doing here? Because we're not here for a good time, guys. Like, you know, second-outics can be fun in that world exists, but you probably know George Second-Ox can not be fun as well, right? And sometimes that's the most valuable time just when they're not fun. Because if they're not fun,

Maybe there's a reason it's not fun. Maybe there's some stuff to unpack there. So setting intentions super huge. Are you there because you feel anxious? You there could feel sad. Are you there because you feel scared? Are you there because you feel bad? Because you feel bad because your son's not doing well.

You know, there's all these different reasons that you could be there. I think if you're honest, the chances of getting some answers to those questions just go up drastically. And maybe even think that way about cannabis, right? I'm a big fan of being intentional about your use. Like if you want to get stoned for fun, God bless. in terms of recreational substances, I think cannabis has the best reward to risk ratio and that it has the most upside

with the least downside. It's not a free lunch. I think cannabis does have a downside. I don't think it's for everyone and it can be abused. You can get dependent on it. I totally believe that. But I think if you're conscious of why are you using it?

So I think to myself, like why do I want to use cannabis after, could I find that relief without it? Could I go without it? Yes. Do I want to go without it? Usually not. Do I use, so I say, okay, well, given this set of variables, how could I use it in a responsible way where I get some of the recreational benefits, you know, the quote, relief after work. But don't use so much where you feel foggy the next morning.

Take a break once in a while. Just be mind, yeah, be mindful about it, I think is the big thing. You know, mindfulness is kind of a dushy term, but I think it can be a really valuable term as well. Because think about, why are you using it? Is this the right form factor and really develop a mature adult relationship where you're using the plant and it's not. using you. Man, it's so well said. It's so well said.

We're blowing through this hour, man. I got questions lining up from the chat over here, man. I know we're coming up on this hour right here, but let me blast out some of these questions from these guys. Okay, if Snoop Dogg and Warren Buffett started a cannabis hedge fund, what's the first stock they would buy? Warren Buffett would only buy Green Thumb Industries because it has the best balance sheet, their current on their taxes.

they have effectively zero debt. They're growing. It has a proven senior management team. It's well capitalized. And so my opinion is 100% if Warren Buffett's involved, it would be green thumb industries. US ticker, GtB-I-F. What's the biggest financial myth about cannabis?

It's a good investment. I'm just kidding. Biggest financial myth about cannabis. Yeah, I would say just being honestly, that people thought it was an easy way to make money. And so there's this notion of the green rush. And I'm embarrassed to say I use that term too. And we thought you'd just show up and you grow a bunch of flour and you sell it for a bunch of money.

And the notion that anyone can do it, maybe that's the best one, George. One of the things I see on X or on LinkedIn, especially on X these days, as people will talk about it's a shitty business because anyone can grow weed. It's like, hey, man, growing a plant without telling me you'd never grow a plant because I've been growing for eight years and I still grow shitty weed in my backyard. Right. And so it takes a long time to get good at this. And yeah, I can grow something that's serviceable and we'll do the job. But I'm not growing like, you know, I still, you know, buy a lot of flour because people, because I get sick of the stuff that I have and other people grow great stuff.

So yeah, I guess it would be the notion that anyone can grow. Anyone can grow and that's a threat to the cannabis industry. I think that's probably one of the, what are the bigger myths. If cannabis stocks had a personality, what kind of person would they be? they'd be a sad person they'd be a distraught person they'd be a fatigue person they'd be a confused person and yeah i think i think i think a lot if i'm just being like really honest to try to help people i think a lot of people feel despair like we're not joking around right um if you're someone who's worked in this industry for a decade i've a lot of good friends who are close to tapping out right

because you know this the investing business has been so bad like it's been four years years, MSOS, the ETF, just as a proxy for the industry, is down 93%. People put too much of their net worth into this sort of stuff. There's people that, you know, took money out of their house or whatever, took a couple hundred grand. Now they got 20 grand left, and they got 30 grand left. What the fuck am I going to tell my wife, right? Like, that's going on out there.

And so that's on the investor level. A lot of retail investors stuck too much money, took too much risk on cannabis. And we could say jokey things, but I get the DMs from people. And shit, man, I've lost a lot of money too. and I sunk my career into this. And, you know, for the last few years, you know, it's been freaking thin, man. Like, if you look around the industry in cannabis, don't think that, don't think we're killing it.

And you guys on the investor side are suffering. We're suffering right there with you because usually we're heavily invested. But, oh, by the way, we also bet our careers on this. And most of the cannabis industry are not getting rich while your stocks are going down. You know, we're getting by in the least that we can try to make this thing work. And so, yeah, I think this is like, you know, the worst thing I've seen in my investment career you know i started in 97 so i was there front and center for the i was there for 2008 with the big mortgage bubble and the banks going you know banks going upside down i've seen

everything in the last 25 years firsthand and nothing compared to and um yeah there's been a lot of wreckage i've seen good friends lose businesses um see people going to conferences you know and sharing rooms at conferences right because they think oh well you're a fancy guy you're going to mj biz you're a fancy guy you're going to be zinga well maybe some of those fancy people are sharing we want to spend 400 bucks because they've been in this, just plugging it out so long, trying to make this work. And so, yeah, I think this is a shitty time. I think a lot of people are scared and feel to spare.

The good news is that's usually a sign you're close to the bottom, right? There's this garbler hype cycle thing, and there's the notion of this trough of disillusionment, which is kind of what it feels like we are now. Then the other side is something called the slope of enlightenment, and that's when things get better, but only once they get so bad, not people are angry and pissed off and yelling, but they get so bad that no one cares anymore. That's when you usually find a bottom. And that's what we see on social media these days.

There's still some yelling and some, but just engagement is down. Accounts you used to see they're not there anymore. People have just thrown in the towel and said, screw this, I'm going to go into AI and invidia and stuff that's actually going up, right? And so I think reform is probably really how we find a bottom, but from a sentiment perspective,

this is about as bad as I've ever seen it, not just in cannabis, but in any sector of my life, that's bad news because it sure does suck today. this is usually the feeling we get closer to the bottom. Shout out to Guap. He says he loves Jesse wide open, really gets it, man. Yeah, I just dropping some knowledge in here. As we're coming up on landing this plane right here, Jesse,

we got about five or so minutes, man. I just wanted to turn it over to you and give you some, please let the listeners know where they can find you, what you have coming up, some cool people maybe you see out there that are doing cool things. Just take these last few minutes to riff and tell us what you're excited about. Yeah, so let's be a little bit selfish here. So if you want to follow me, you can follow.

If you're the LinkedIn type, I'm over there. My name is Jesse Redmond. If you're on X, it's at Jesse Redmond. So there's a couple social ways you can follow me. I usually respond to DM. So if this is something you want to talk about, shoot me a DM. Usually I'm responsive to those. Our company is Leaf Brands.

That's at Leaf Brands on X, L-E-E-F brands. We're going to crank it out more content over there. So that's automatic. Just improve our social presence. So go give Leaf Brands a follow. could check out our website. That's at LeafBrand. Again, leafbrands.com. But man, if I were to close it in a selfish way, the business side, I would say that

I think we're at a really unique situation with Leaf to invest ahead of change. And we can invest ahead of change broadly in the industry because of things like rescheduling and safe banking and uplisting and eventually federal reform, like all these great catalysts for the industry as a whole. But even throw that out the window, if we don't get that stuff still at Leaf Brands, we're doing major things. We're planting what will become world's largest cannabis farm this year. We just boosted extraction output across all three lines.

66% increase in ethanol, 38% of hydrocarbon, 50% on solvent list for rosin. We're going to be entering new states this year, we think. So look for us to move out to the East Coast, maybe somewhere in the Midwest, and become a multi-state operator. We're also doing this innovative thing on the Bitcoin side, doing a Bitcoin Treasury Reserve, or adding Bitcoin to the balance sheet. And so I joined Leaf Brands. Like when I left Water Tower Research, there's only really two companies I would consider working for.

It was super stoked when reached out to me. And I really, really feel that this is an opportunity to invest ahead of change. Like this company has done so much work before I got there. And I just get to show up for the fun part, which is the stuff actually happening. And it's not a gimmy, right? Planting plants and doing a harvest, it's not 100% certainty. This is all going to work out awesome, right? Like, this is farming.

And so things could happen. But we think we've set the table to have more growth and more margin improvement than anyone else in cannabis. Like we're expecting to grow at over 30% for the next two years. I don't know of a public cannabis company that has that kind of growth trajectory. Our margins for 24 will be somewhere around 30, 32%. 26th, we think those will be over 50%. And so we are a business that is going to drastically change. And that's really at a fundamental basis with these four pillars of growth.

the farm, the advances extraction technology, the moving out of state Bitcoin strategy. Those are our four pillars of growth and that's not even taking that we hope the rest of the industry has. So I'm super excited about Leaf. That's why I joined the company and yeah, it's been awesome.

I guess the last thing maybe I'd leave it with is for the investing community I think if there's a takeaway that you can build on here, it's to take this cannabis experience and use it as learning about risk management, right?

And so cannabis is a speculative asset class. It's not something you're supposed to have 50% of your net worth in. Some financials advisors I know have a 10% really highly speculative bucket. And in there, you might throw emerging markets. In there, you might put things like crypto. And in there, you might throw things like cannabis. And maybe for most people, not financial advice, but maybe that's kind of where cannabis, you know, where cannabis belongs.

And so I think this is a good opportunity to think about like, much cannabis stock should you own. I don't want you to quote, sell at the bottom. I'm not telling you this is the bottom, but don't like panic out of it. But be mindful of what that exposure is. And I'd pair that with really thinking about what your time frame is for these investments. I didn't know it was offline. I think it might have been offline, George, when we were talking. And I was talking about this notion of it's a fine line between being early and wrong and we're walking it. And I still think we get there in cannabis. I still think all the cool reasons that we're here, that we hope would work out. I think those things still are.

happen, but it gets taking longer than all of us would have expected. And I think it's really hard to predict how much longer that's going to take. So don't be here for a trade for one year. I think three to five years is the minimum. And I think the really right way to invest in cannabis is to have a five or 10 year time horizon. Give yourself the opportunity to go from 24 to 50 to adult new states. Give yourself the opportunity for things like rescheduling to happen, safe banking to happen, uplifting to higher exchanges to happen. And then ultimately, you know, we'll get federal legalization one day. So I guess those are kind of a closing thought. Super excited about Leaf Brand specific things. I think about what did I learn from this horrible experience investing in campus?

Probably some things on the risk management side, probably some things on the time horizon side. And last really selfish thing that I'll say is I do a podcast every week with my friend Morgan Paxia. It's called Higher Exchanges. It's more about the investing side. But if you'd like today's episode, maybe check out Higher Exchanges as well. Everybody, go down, check out Higher Exchanges. Check out Jesse. Reach out to one. him. The guy's incredibly knowledgeable and he's got the intention to back it up. Shout out to Leaf and everybody out there in the struggle. We all feel you and good things are coming. Jesse, hang on briefly afterwards, but to everybody within the sound of my voice, thank you so much

for hanging out with us today. That's all we got. Aloha.