Big Weed

by Christian Hageseth

  We hadn’t won in 2013, but we were okay with that. For most growers, the Cannabis Cup is a once-in-a-lifetime achievement. Which is why the 2014 award meant so much. We had won two of these in five years. We were doing something right.

  As we were stepping down from the stage, some reporters were waiting to pull us aside. Could we go somewhere to talk? Would we let them film us for a short interview?

  Fine, I said, and followed them out to the hallway to set up the shot.

  I figured that they were with a local news program. Or part of the growing marijuana media that covered these events internationally. But they weren’t.

  “We’re with CBS This Morning,” the producer said, and then before I had a chance to regain my composure over being interviewed by one of the nation’s oldest and most respected morning programs, the lights came on, and the cameras started rolling. The following morning, before I’d had my coffee, I watched veteran broadcaster Charlie Rose introduce me to the nation as the man who grew the best marijuana in the country. That was nice, if not strictly accurate. But then, you can’t expect the media to nail down the details every single time.

  Monday I had every intention of going into the office, but I was too exhausted from the previous week, so I just slept in. I woke to a backload of messages on my cellphone. My voicemail had been deluged with well-wishers, mainstream news reporters, cannabis industry journalists, and more, all of whom wanted to talk or get a quote.

  Our accountant Patrick gave me the final tally of our costs for the weekend: $72,000. We had gone over budget, which is never fun. But I consoled myself with two things: (1) We had walked away with the event’s top prize, and (2) we had staked out our claim with thousands of marijuana enthusiasts who had flown to Denver to attend this event. I could not put a price on that type of brand recognition. We wanted to attract exactly this demographic with the Cannabis Ranch in a few years.

  It wasn’t until a day or so later, down at one of the grows, that I got a chance to catch up with the man who is actually responsible for producing the best marijuana in the country—our grower Corey.

  “Can I talk to you a sec?” he said. “It’s kind of important.”

  He then launched into what was on his mind. I don’t remember precisely how he phrased it, but it was in reference to a recent deal we were trying to work out with a potential partner in Nevada. This partner had enough pull to get itself a medical marijuana license in that state, but the owners had no desire to be weed farmers or retailers. They wanted to contract their day-to-day management to a company with a proven record. I had a lot riding on this deal. If our application was accepted, we’d have a shot at setting up a fresh operation in a second state.

  And now, here was Corey, telling me he wasn’t going to be able to put his name on the Nevada application. You see . . . he, uh. . . . had been working with someone else.

  My face was warm.

  You’re my friend, I thought. You can’t do this to me.

  “Where are you going?” I asked him.

  He mentioned the name of a start-up medical marijuana company in Nevada. He’d been in negotiations with them—and other outfits back home in Georgia and Florida—for more than four months. Nevada wanted him. Badly. And the owners were willing to give him a piece of their company. Six months ago, we had granted him an equity share of our business without requiring a financial commitment from him. We wanted him to feel part of the team.

  And he was walking away from all this?

  “You don’t do this this way,” I snapped. “You don’t just leave. You could have come talked to me.”

  “I tried to, a couple of times. But when I mentioned the possibility of doing something outside Green Man, you said no.”

  He reminded me of several conversations we’d had, and he was correct. I had shut him down. I had not been open to hearing about any deal outside of Green Man, and Corey was itching to do something that would allow him to get a larger ownership position. He knew his time was ripe to grab the golden ring.

  “You know what?” I said, “Let’s do this later. When can we sit and talk?”

  I was pissed. Fucking pissed.

  I’d gone to bat for him to get equity in our company because he’d done amazing things for us. We had hammered out what I’d thought was a generous package for him. But it hadn’t been enough, not compared to the other offers a man of his abilities can get at this time in this industry. Yet he had yessed me six months ago, the last time we talked about his future, and now it looked like he’d gone out shopping for a better deal.

  There’s no other way to put it. I felt betrayed. But I was just wise enough to realize that I was probably also just feeling vulnerable. In the last year, my wife and I had split; I had been betrayed then, and now the divorce was final. I had the feeling that I was wrongfully projecting the feelings I had about my broken marriage onto Corey’s choices.

  For a couple days, I thought about the Corey situation and realized that I had a chance to make it right. If I was honest with myself, I had to admit that I probably would have done the same thing in his position. I talked it out with Barb and Mr. Pink, and I came to understand how Corey had reached this point. Well, I thought, Corey wants to own a piece of something that corresponds to his contribution. He wants more, and he deserves it. He had helped me achieve my goals, and I would help him achieve his.

  Late one afternoon, Corey was waiting for me when I got to El Diablo. I sat at the bar and ordered the usual: a Dos Equis and a shot of chilled Patrón. No training wheels—no lime, no salt.

  “I’m not through being pissed at you,” I told him. “But I get it. I feel like you lied to me. You should have told me.”

  “I tried—” And he again recounted all the times he had brought it up.

  “I know. But, fuck, dude, we just won the fucking U.S. Cannabis Cup together, again. Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Yeah, there was a lot of swearing. I put together a string of expletives that I would proudly look back upon later.

  “Look,” Corey said, “I’m sorry you found out the way you did. But I can’t go on your Nevada application. My name is already on one which has been submitted, and no one person can be on two applications.”

  This was correct. This was going to make a lot of work for Barb and the team that was submitting the Nevada application. They had already written Corey into all the documents; removing him would compromise the quality of our document. But we had no choice.

  “Can we just come clean for a second?” I said. “What do you want? What’s the end goal right now?”

  He seemed relieved that I had asked and launched into a longer explanation. He wanted a better future for himself and his family. He didn’t want to wake up one day to find out that he was in his sixties and still working for the same cannabis company for a basic salary and a few points. He wanted to make something for himself.

  “It’s different for you,” he said. “You already have a big equity stake in a big company. I don’t. I don’t want to work my whole life for someone like you. I want to be you. I want to be where you are.”

  He was basically echoing something that Brandon, one of my earliest growers, had said. The world of cannabis was opening up. Guys like Brandon and Corey had expertise that they knew was valuable, but they weren’t sure how to go about selling it to the world.

  What I also heard in his words was poverty consciousness—believing that you will always be trapped in a rat race where the wealth goes to the very few, which never includes you. I recognized the signs.

  Corey and I had similar upbringings. We grew up with hardworking parents. And we were hard workers, hungry and resilient. I’d been working since I was eight years old, first on a newspaper route, then cleaning a women’s resource center in Boulder where my mom volunteered and got them to hire my brother and me.

 
But over the years I’d internalized a radical message: The world is filled with unlimited wealth and opportunities. Why worry how much money you are making at this job? If you are unhappy, find your bliss. If you find a job that pays you more, do that. Or start a business because you’re passionate about creating a new product. Quit your accounting job and start baking the best muffins in the world and sell them to local coffee shops. Do what you must, but find your bliss. The world is abundant when you are doing what you are here to do. I could tell Corey wanted to believe in this philosophy but was having trouble seeing it come to fruition.

  I lifted the tequila to my lips and tossed it back.

  In my head, I had a couple of thoughts: I like this guy. I like his family. He’s a good, solid person, and I need to help him.

  I reached over the bar for a napkin.

  “What do you want to make?” I said, digging in my pocket for a pen. “A million, two million?”

  He started protesting, probably assuming that I was making a joke. He knew our company couldn’t afford to pay him that kind of salary.

  “No,” I said. “It’s all gonna come from you. You don’t just have skill. You have intellectual property. You’re the man who knows how to grow the best weed in the world. So you don’t go to work for these guys. You get them to sign a contract with you and you consult with them.”

  My pen was cranking out some numbers. What was he worth? Hell, what was he worth to me on the open market? A few hundred bucks an hour? A few hundred hours a month of his time?

  “You just told me you know guys who could use you down in Florida and Georgia, right? Well, fine. They sign a contract with you, too. And then of course I sign a contract with you, too—”

  “You would, too?” he said.

  “After I get finished being pissed, yeah. Because I know you’re worth it. See, if you do it this way, a couple of jobs like you do for me and then get a few other clients, in a year you could end up making . . .”

  I held up the napkin.

  “Jesus!”

  “It won’t be easy, but it’s doable. But this way, your family doesn’t have to move to Nevada. They stay put right here in Denver. You fly to the clients to dial in their growing operations. It stresses you, not your family. And one day, when you get sick of flying around and the business is established, you could probably sell it for, oh, six to ten million bucks.”

  He was silent, peering at the numbers on my napkin like they were unobtainable gold.

  “I can’t . . . I can’t do that. I’m already in with these guys in Nevada. They’re offering me forty percent of the company.”

  I smiled. “Do both. Look, I don’t want to tell you what to do. But if you go to Nevada, you’re moving backward. In four years’ time, you’ll still be running their one grow servicing their one dispensary, and the whole time, you’ll have to keep praying that they know how to run a business. We’ll have twenty dispensaries in three years’ time. Why go backward? Play the field. Get us all to sign consulting agreements. That way, you get a piece of all our companies.”

  You could see in his eyes he was thinking, “This could work.”

  I slid the numbers over to him.

  “Take the napkin home. Think about it. Want another drink?”

  Thursday night, it was my board’s turn to be pissed.

  Who the hell did Corey think he was? He had already put his name on another application? For some other company? The ranting went on for a little while. The directors were all pissed. Similarly, they all felt betrayed. They had every right to be angry. They also had every right to be happy. My job was to get them to accept happy over angry.

  If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that fighting in business rarely gets you anywhere. You have to look for the win-win solution. If you’re selling something, you have to figure out what the other guy needs, not only because he’ll help you close the deal but because you’ll have his emotional buy-in as well. With employees, the paradigm is slightly different. They want a good salary and benefits, but they also want to feel appreciated. They want to feel like part of a team, part of something bigger. That’s where I’d screwed up with Corey. I’d ignored his requests to talk about his future, and I’d made him feel like he was outside the fold.

  “No,” I told the board, “you’re not seeing the whole picture. Corey is part of our success. He’s part of the Green Man story. We either choose to be angry, or we can choose to have a meaningful business partnership.”

  They came around slowly, but they came around. When we adjourned the meeting, the board was on board. I just needed to wait for Corey’s response to my proposal.

  People often need to be reminded what side their bread is buttered on. I was pretty sure we were going to work something out with Corey. He knew my offer was sincere and heartfelt, and he would consider it carefully. But I also felt good for myself. I had managed to sever my feelings of work betrayal from the bullshit of my personal life. And I had taken a positive step forward to appreciate a colleague I loved like a brother, and who had helped make my business what it was.

  Later that week, we threw a party at the Cap City Tavern to congratulate ourselves on the Cannabis Cup win. We invited everyone we could think of—employees, board members, vendors, colleagues, patients, and clients. In the back of the bar, we set up a bar of our own. Instead of serving drinks, we were offering samples of our winning Ghost Train Haze and all of the other strains we had showcased at the Cannabis Cup. Our guests helped themselves to our bud bar.

  We all marveled at our new world as we smoked away.

  I got roped into a conversation with a marijuana hater.

  “I still think it’s wrong,” she told me bluntly. She had hated seeing the national media cover the 420 event in front of the capitol. Hated seeing her city broadcast nationally as the marijuana mecca of the United States. “I just think it’s bad publicity and it’s bad for the state.”

  Hey, I wanted to say, your husband has been working with our company for five years. You’re directly benefiting from our success.

  And thank you for your concern, I could have gone on, but I think the great state of Colorado is making out all right in the bargain. Last I checked, it was projecting a $30 million windfall this year on marijuana tax revenue.

  But hey—she is entitled to her point of view. If she says she doesn’t like seeing Denver portrayed this way, who can argue?

  It’s not my place to judge what other people think or feel. As I’d just recently learned for the umpteenth time, even when I think I am in a fully committed relationship, my partners may change their minds. It reminded me to choose my partners carefully and remain flexible. With all our success, there remained many hurdles, both expected and unexpected, to be overcome.

  I nodded until she wandered off to procure more of her drug of choice—booze.

  14

  Investors

  Sometime in 2013, I began putting together business plans to present to the qualified investors I was courting. Every business plan has a section where the prospective borrower states the risks of investing in their company. Typically, the biggest risk is that investors might well lose their shirts. Ours was probably the only business plan ever written that carried this strange disclaimer:

  Currently, there are many drug dealers and cartels that cultivate, buy, sell and trade marijuana in Colorado and worldwide. Many of these dealers and cartels are violent and dangerous as well as well-financed and well-organized. It is possible that these dealers and cartels could feel threatened by legalized marijuana businesses such as the Company’s and could take action against or threaten the Company, its principals, employees and/or agents, and this could negatively impact the Company and its business.

  The language is pure Wall Street: measured, careful, perhaps even a little stilted, but I’m guessing you get th
e gist. Now, did I really believe that there was a slight chance that drug lords were going to come kill us? No. According to the last report I’d read, the United States’ illegal drug habit—for all major drugs—generated about $100 billion for the drug cartels every year. The entire legal marijuana business in the United States took in only $1.53 billion in revenue in 2013. By that measure, I thought the drug lords were still doing pretty well, but there was still a risk, and every risk needs to be in a business plan.

  When I was fresh out of college and starting my first ice cream shop, a young friend of mine had a sizable fortune and wanted to invest in my business. I was into it. She was gung-ho. There was just one hurdle. Her accountant wanted to see my business plan.

  I was like, Huh?

  I had graduated college with a BA in political science. I had studied Russian and traveled to Russia as part of my education. My first trip was part of a language and cultural exchange to Leningrad in the summer of 1990. My second trip was to Moscow in the summer of 1992. I arrived in a very different place than I had been two years before. The Russian people had revolted against the communists who controlled the Soviet Union. Once their revolt turned to revolution, they installed a democratically elected senate and president. It was a fascinating moment in history for a young man to observe.

  While in college, I was president of my fraternity, SAE, vice president of the student body government, president of the student senate, vice president of College Republicans, and sat on a Greek disciplinary board. I was one of those serious young people who got quoted a lot in the campus newspaper. I was a big man on campus, maybe too big. I was a straight-C student. The whole time I was in college, I was learning a lot about how the world worked. In addition to the activities I just mentioned, I always held down another job to pay the bills. I worked as a bartender, a caddy, and a bouncer at a topless bar.