Michael Scott on Scaling a Cannabis Business and Handling an Exit

0:04 all right so um I want to start out with a little bit of a story art like on a high level of kind of um where you first got started in your career um the first major business you had and then uh the kind of like the scale up kind of like the 10,000 foot view of just kind of what that story looks like I think that people will find it really interesting sounds good sure um you guys hear me okay how's every everyone doing today all right um so I would say like going back to my careerwise I started out my very first job was actually teaching martial arts when I was about 15 and a half 16 um at to this day it's still my my leading passion and my most my favorite business actually that I own um so I started out in martial arts I was competing uh as a competitor was captain of the national team um loved it but the highest level sport martial arts competition fade like nothing I say nothing if I traveled the country and wi and won everything at a competition I might make 500 bucks it was like nothing um so you know was 22 turning 23 it was time to to land into a real career and so I moved to Massachusetts the job market was just much better there and I just started interviewing like crazy and um I consider myself a a PhD which I

1:23 Define as or hungry and driven not the college uh PhD because I actually don't have a college degree um and uh so you know I learned that PhD from just being very focused and tenacious I learned a lot of that from martial arts being discipline focused and um tenacity which I find is you know one of the most basic things and anything uh anything entrepreneurial or any bold ambitious goal I I just think it's a it's an absolute tenasity but but after I started interviewing I I landed in the financial services industry um as a wealth advisor uh to this day I kind of wonder why they hired me because I uh had very limited Finance backgrounds I was teaching martial arts and they kind of looked at my resume and they just said you know it doesn't really fit what we typically would go after but you know we recently hired an NFL player who did well because of his Sports background and his unique Focus we're going to we're going to give you a shot and again I think back to my suit and my first time is literally wearing like a kittye with a suit like it's embarrassing to think back so I I wonder why the heck they actually hired me but they did um so that was my kind of the start of mic fa a financial advisor okay uh so how

2:41 did you Financial advis to get into hold industry U which was another big jump um where people want to wonder how you did that and then how did that turn into scaling something to have a 99 figure exit that a lot of people here in the room would love to do one day yeah so I um you know I kind of after a while got a little bored of the finance industry I'm I'm really not a true Finance guy at heart uh but I had a successful career at it I started out in AER prize I was one of not to reach their top 1% uh category of 10,000 advisors they called it cat and I was kind of ready for what's next and I started uh deploying capital in the businesses and I would Mentor the entrepreneur uh at an hour at two hour a week and um you know I although I had not built a ton of businesses i' built a highly successful practice wealth banded practice so there's a lot of similarities and um so I would Mentor these entrepreneurs I'd provide all the startup capital and I kind of loved it I was getting this passive income and I loved the leverage of being an entrepreneur you know spending a little bit of time weekly yet I was generating this revenue and and then I started realizing gez there's the

3:59 cash flow but I can sell these businesses and I keep doing that so I just kind of kept launching businesses uh you know I was doing it in the fitness sector I was active in martial arts um I got in the CrossFit Gyms because I found out I could have my mixed martial arts program kind of in the back while I was active in CrossFit gym so I got active in in different businesses and around 2016 um you know I had you know my partner running the CrossFit gym the martial arts gym was being run with my other partner ERS and my wealth management business was being run I'm really big on leadership specifically what I call level five leadership and if you do that well um you can pull yourself out of the machine and you know I started studying billionaires in 2016 and then I really started to understand leverage at a much deeper level and you know again I I say PhD I think you can reverse engineer learning they spent I read I don't know probably eight books uh from various billionaires I was I I just absorb any content I could find on the internet YouTube Etc and by the end of that year my thought was this isn't rocket science like this is something that you can replicate so I said well I've got some capital I had an exit not too long ago and I said you

5:17 know what I'm going to try to find the most explosive fastest growing industry out there I want to apply my learnings from the billionaires which I which I think it's genius that you did billionaires. comom um and so I so by the end of that year you know I remember the conversation like it was yesterday this was 2016 and cannabis looked different at that point time I was I was like one of the early ogs so to speak in cannabis on the east coast in fact I built the East Coast's 26th dispensary legal adult use dispensary that had ever been opened and I just kind of kept going we kept opening more dispensaries and I was applying my learnings from the billionaires that became vertically integrated and I said gez you know what they do is they're on retail extraction manufacturing real estate you're making money all along the vertical that minimizes your downside risk and drastically improves your upside so I started doing that I was fortunate I lived in Massachusetts which was the very first fully legal cannabis Market on the entire East Coast so I um you know I was a little skeptical before I jumped in you know I studied the industry studied billionaires but December of that year uh I saw cannabis work as an amazing medicine for my mother who suffers from pretty extreme PTSD and in one of her worst episodes I just saw it be a miracle drug for her

6:37 and and I always would Mentor my entrepreneurs if you can mix entrepreneurism with passion so I see how success goes way up because you got understand 90% of people will fail in business or an entrepreneurism somewhere between their Fifth and 10th year if not in their first year and so you want to have passion connected to whatever it is you're doing it was right at that moment I knew cannabis was misunderstood from a societal perspective had lots of value in terms of medicinal and when you when I studied and analyzed the downside risks of cannabis it having come from Asian culture I'm half Korean half Australian I had never even tried cannabis in my 30s in fact funny story in my late teens my dad so I the uh DEA and anti-drug task force and used to do cannabis raids say cannabis cultivations you know now now here I am what 30 years later 40 years later in the industry like the Kingpin on the East Coast it's kind of funny um but look I I the moment I saw this be a miracle drug from M I was like holy smokes this industry is so misunderstood 990,000 people will die from alcohol annually and it's totally socially accept nobody dies from

7:54 Cannabis more people will die from Tylenol this year and caffine so I I was whoa this is like something's wrong and I was like this is an investment opportunity I was like this is an entrepreneurial opportunity right in my backyard so I started studying I started getting excited and when the passion was there two three weeks later I it was like the first week of January I went to my wealth management partners and said you guys have fun running this for a year they're like yep I said you want to do it again how about you just keep running this I said I'm going to go and build the Cannabis business one of my partners came in with me on it and uh I focused on cannabis he ran wealth management business um and then began the most intense entrepreneurial journey I ever embarked way bigger than I originally thought I was chewing into because some people might hear you come from wealth management so probably you had all the capital you needed and that's how you built a big platform and exited you talk about your Capital raising investor relations Journey as you kind of went through that phase and then we'll talk about how Society views cannabis after that yeah I mean a lot of people assumed that I got my capital for my wealth management practice so I Capital came from my wealth management practice actually um because that's federally regulated you couldn't touch any of those Investments for cannabis

9:10 and I wasn't going to jeopardize that business because I had two other partners that relied on that income their families did so I drew we basically created this wall between the practice and what I was doing and segmented the two I had to actually go out there and learn how to raise private capital for the first time in my life and I was over way over confident borderline arrogant in terms of what I thought I was going to be able to do I had this attitude like oh I'm just going to go out there talk to a bunch of people raise 5 10 million and and just capitalize this whole thing right and and I led with my own personal investment dollars half million dollars so my dollars were the half first half million in I kind of went at the industry Shark Tank style took me six to nine months to find my partners uh you know they had an idea but they had nothing else so I co-founded the company with them put the money in and I thought I was going to raise all the be so I I was like you know I've got the successful wealth management career I'm going to raise this Capital so I like 12 weeks goes by and my 500 Cas only money and I'm like what did I just sign up for I'm like I'm getting declined like crazy I'm trying to raise money at that $52 million valuation and people are like looking at

10:28 me cross-side like what are you talking about this is an idea you have nothing more than a pitch deack like you're raising money at a 52 I just got slaughtered out there right so this was so I 17 late summer the stress started building I'm like three months four months in now my capital's the only Capital I'm like oh my gosh now if you know my wife my wife is like I'm the risk taker she's like on the other end of the spectrum I'm like oh great what did I sign up for um and then it was around Q4 that year I reached out to family office Club in fact it was Andreas was the first person I talked to nice and you know I went through the website I got some references on I was like okay I need to learn how to raise cap this is I gotta sign up for this and I'm talking to Andre I'm like hey I'll sign up but I keep trying to get in touch with this Richard guy but he's like hard to get in touch with I'm like look I'm interested in Sig up but I need at least one conversation with Richard I was like I just have a handful of questions for him I need one conversation with so he he's like you know what everybody else on the team is like nope Richard doesn't take calls like this he's a really busy guy and Andre worked with me I was like just can I get one 30 minute conversation so he got me in front of Richard I was really impressed with him he gave me a bunch of pointers honestly right then and there the reason why I wanted Richard is I had like six hot questions on what I needed

11:46 to do and how I need to change my raise approach and I needed those things answered so I can go out there start raising money because the stress started building I'm like what did I just sink a half million dollars into um anyways the rest of the story is I immediately signed up for family office Club after speaking to Richard I learned how to raise capital in fact I learned two things from family office club and family office Club is still my favorite family office series by far I was just at opal um earlier this week and um you know the culture here is more entrepreneurial and I'm very much an entrepreneur thrown through so I I just love that but I signed up for family office club and I love learned two things I learned how to raise private investment Capital completely very different skill set than being a wealth adviser and number two I also really learned you know wealth advisers think they know how to vet public and private Investments wealth advisers know nothing about truly vetting private Investments I actually learned that through trial and air and mostly through family office club and I've now made quite a few private Investments and uh I really utilize the things that I've learned right here at this conference awesome yeah when I when running this investor Club I see so many people place a massive emphasis on investor relationships like how many contacts they can get in front of when listening to you it's like the mental

13:03 models what you learn from wealth management you applied to business and then you learned stuff here about working with investors and you applied it to your cannabis platform and your martial arts background taught you discipline and focus and tenacity so much of it is about mental models like strategies you picked up and then your mental state and being able to control and focus your energy it's so much of the game it seems but people new to the investor Club are always 98% focused on give me a TR investor yeah and we do that too but it's interesting just to see that and hear your story the way you describe it yeah execution is key in in all areas of life and execution and business it's hard I don't care if we're talking 500 employee business or or five execution is not hard um I'm sorry excuse me is hard I I will tell you people a lot of times think it's a matter of just getting the form me you know uh getting the answers to something that's only half the battle the other half the battle is you have to execute and apply it right I had to take all these techniques from Richard I had to figure out how to do the zooms I had to turn it into a numbers game I had to learn how to vet the phony investors from the real investors it was a process and I took tons of pitches again I came into this industry Shark Tank style then I partnered with one of the Sharks Kevin

14:22 Harrington from Shark Tank who I met through family office Club it was Richard and his team that played a a great role in helping make that introduction but um yeah it was a really wild journey and Kevin was an early investor um and look I'll speak to the benefits of of pitching with reputable Brands right uh when you're building something from nothing the skepticism is always going to be well why do we have to believe or why should we believe that you're going to build this you know and what I'll tell you is cannabis is an extremely difficult industry to raise Capital arguably one of the the most difficult right you got like you have so many things you're dealing you got the fact that jez it's federally illegal uh a lot of banks don't don't deal with it there's tons of stigma associated with it um so it was it was a difficult thing I'm proud to say in large part because of this community I think I'm about 56 million now approaching 60 million and private Capital raised alongside my money wow and how long did it take the raise the first 5 million the first 10 million what would you say that timeline looks like so to go through the timeline probably Q4 of 17 I hired family office

15:43 Club I started hitting my stride right around that time I'm telling you that that first call I did with you Richard you actually you got me the down and dirty the core things I needed I started actually getting traction right from that call then I started learning a lot more from the family office Club conference I would say let's see I started getting like the base hits the first four five investors like 100 200k investors um then I started getting bigger investors half million then it really there was a game changer there were these brothers that had an exit that I got referred to and referrals it's all about referrals the highest quality conversion leads you can get uh there was three brothers that had a really nice exit and they wrote three and a half or $4 million check and now all of a sudden when you get the bigger investors your credibility goes up you're getting bigger checks um and we just kept going you know we had enough now to fund one dispensary two dispensaries then we got into cultivation extraction manufacturing we were fully vertical and because I was able to raise the money so quickly that's how this was able to be uh an idea in 2017 to $104 million exit three and2 years later it would not have happened had I not been able to get this Capital

17:00 quickly enough and then number two tons of uh credit to the ex the operating team for executing with Excellence you need both you have to have the capital you've also got to be able to execute um and then there's a lot to to actually exiting properly as well but it was a wild Journey that's uh that's one of the reasons that I enjoy running the investor Club most it's like how many of us would like to have a cup of coffee with someone who in three and a half years built and sold a company for hundred million do right like you can't have enough of those coffee conversations if you're in business and Michaels of that same mindset that's why I love doing these types of interviews if you know someone else that um is a successful as Michael and you think we should be doing some sort of fireside chat with definitely let me know um I want to ask you about deal origination I know for people looking for investors when they see a slide on how to increase their deal origination and get more deal flow and even when investors see that they might not realize how because everybody oh I've got all the deal flow I need what I need is invest s if I had all the investors I need I'd do a billion dollars a month in deals and that's true with anyone who can go to loopnet or you know Source deals from a business broker but can you comment real quick just on uh the importance of seeing lots of deals uh def find the good ones and how that's connected to raising Capital faster uh absolutely so if you don't have good deal flow your

18:20 likelihood of Landing Capital into something uh worthwhile is significantly diminished right so um we I can't tell you in my first three years of cannabis how many pitches I sat and I listened through um it it was a lot that was one of my strategic rationals for doing the deal with Kevin um you know look when you're going to partner with one of the Sharks you're going to give up some equity and and it's just like in the TV show they're ruthless and their deal negotiations between them their attorneys and their team um and it was like a 3 four month negotiation um and I got the deal done on much fairer terms than what they originally wanted but I was willing to give up some Equity because I knew it was going to bring credibility to a company uh in an industry that honestly lacked a lot of CR a lot of people it's different now than it is in 2017 now over 90% of uh people in this country uh World believe medical cannabis should be legal back then it was lower and it was also less than 50% of society believe adult use cannabis should be legal now the majority society believes Adult Ed cannabis should be legal so that credibility and aligning myself with

19:38 Kevin it yes it gave me credibility but number two I intentionally wanted to be looked at like a mini shark uh like a mini shark in the Cannabis I got a ton of deal flow and I'll give you an example of some of the deal flow I've gotten I actually don't even want to spend as much time as I'm spending of the Cannabis world but it kind of keeps pulling me back in because of the success I'll give you some examples when you when you create that deal flow become a deal flow mag uh what will happen so one of my deals uh when I was building Nature's remedy which is the company that I exited for 104 million uh we built a dispensary put a million into it we sold it for 13.5 million to one of the big players so 13 and 12x multiple pretty quickly then that basically lost its opportunity to do business in Massachusetts uh opportunity to buy a pack for a million right and and now that dispensary you know the Market's not as high as it was back then but we're going to open that dispensary this year it'll probably be worth 5 to eight million um within a year year and a half and once the market comes back up uh for many of you that don't know the DEA recently slated their changing the scheduling of cannabis from schedule one to schedule three that's a big big deal right now schedule one says cannabis is

20:56 as harmful to society as heroin and has has zero medicinal benefits uh War 3 says it's nowhere near as harmful and there's lots of medical benefits so so you think that's going to change everything by the way I was going um it's why I'm batting it's part of the reason why I'm kind of spending a little more time in cannabis cannabis when I got into it was was emerging on the East Coast rapidly uh where public markets still Canada was this close to being the first legal country in cannabis but guess what happened the Canadian Stock Exchange became the world's first Exchange to bank cannabis so here's what happened and this is why I'm betting on it's going to happen again this is why I'm putting my time and my energy a little more in cannabis and I even want to um uh where reason I was able to sell part of it is timing uh where canic Stock Exchange had just had billions of dollars come through for the first time the world was excited about investing in legal cannabis businesses uh what happened is I saw that money come into Massachusetts and I saw some of my peers going into bankruptcy having their business is bought out for $8 million for failure right so some this is about timing um and so what happened to the Cannabis industry if you look at it on the macro it got really hot public markets there was more money chasing uh the the lots of money was

22:14 chasing lots of bad deals because there were not enough seasoned cannabis businesses that were well-run yet in fact when I look back on those businesses at time you can look at the stock a lot of the stock fell apart because these businesses were poorly rough so the public markets went down last couple years have not been hot for cannabis but what just happened six weeks ago the DEA schedule changed I promise you this industry is about to pop it is estimated 15 trillion with a t dollars are going to come into this industry once the major US exchanges allow it to come in right now you still cannot go to erade you can't go to Fidelity marrow UBS you can't buy plant touching Canabis stocks in this country still but what that's all about the change that DEA changing the schedule change is the first Domino to fall I see that happening that some people in the industry think it's going to happen Q4 this year I think it'll take longer but um that's happening safe banking will happen and then the the the major exchanges I can will allow cannabis come through what's that going to do even if it's not 15 trillion and it's five trillion for someone like me that's got cannabis businesses out there and I can keep sourcing cannabis I mean that's a a huge opportunity for

23:31 another exit and I've now built another cannabis company that this year should do 15 16 million next year should do 30 million um and I'm hopeful to to exit it again for 150 to 250 is the the goal true um if you were starting everything over today or talking to someone here that wants to grow to that size what would you do differently I mean three and a half years to scale 100 million I mean that's pretty dang fast but like what would you do to to to grow even faster or grow even larger be more effective what what Insight have you learned um geez a lot um so number one I would have been much more even more skeptical uh on the industry because there were just some people that we place trust and time and energy and capital with that that were not trustworthy so uh do do do even even deeper vetting now to this point now um I literally have a pi firm that will in some cases really deep vetting so I'm far more skeptical I just kind of look at any way that comes to to me that pitches me is probably talking BS first um and I kind of go into it that and I I try to I try to seek to find okay is this a real deal um I'm far more skeptical than I ever used number two um number one really appreciate

24:51 more how Executives of a company may not be willing to change as quickly as the company when you go from an idea number one all of a sudden cash flowing to 15 million to 30 million to 100 million exit the company looks and feels so different at these different stages in three and a half years so what you have to be prepared to do is lead that executive team in a way that you change the people or change the people and that might sound harsh but what I mean by that is good leadership and direction from the board on how to grow into the opportunity or it's nothing personal it's time for you to step aside because this is what's needed to build this from a pre- uh Revenue startup to a 9 figureure company um and some of those changes had I looked back just um just didn't happen quick enough and I I I actually think that if we' handled some of these things differently from a board level we probably would have gotten an extra 50 to 100 million uh what's say a million dollar size a million doll Insight uh so just like a big Insight yeah like one of the most valuable insights you can think um so I'll give one on both sides

26:10 um an investor and you're looking to invest in the right team vet for um emotional intelligence I find it one of the most important things to vet for lots of people vet for different things in order to believe what that person is telling you they've got to actually have the raw tenacity grit Focus indomitable Spirit to actually build it they don't have a deep level of emotional intelligence they just won't get there um I think of myself as a a relatively emotional intelligent person still have plenty of room to grow but I've got a track record of success it's pretty consistent and compelling in all areas of my life because of emotional intelligence so when I V this person I I basically draw a line and I go back to their career and I say to them walk me through your outlier accomplishments in your lifetime whether it be educational work rated Sports whatever it is and I'll go all the way back to like when they're 20 believe it or not kind of a lengthy question because they have to kind of keep answering every chapter of their life but I've gotten pretty good at it I can tell if someone's kind of like tap dancing and making up accolades by the way write it all out then you can go back and vet for it too to much of it

27:28 seems like embellishment then I'm not going to be too but but but if it seems like right on point and I love the people that are actually like more humble and they they they they actually undersold themselves but then there's a consistent track record so so vet for if you're on the investment side bet for emotional intelligence um and be very cautious about can you trust this person you have to remember I've been on both sides an investor and a Founder let me just tell you there have been plenty of times I'm a Founder if I don't raise this next half million dollars this company goes under and you have to hope that the person talking to you actually has in Integrity if they don't they're just getting your money just because they need your money so that's a real important factor on the other side of it so that's on the investment side um if you're trying to raise Capital um I guess my advice would be uh execute on what you're learning at conferences like this and just know that if you're trying to raise Capital it really is a numbers game and you have to execute on the numbers what we knew is like in our early days we knew hey we needed 20 referrals or leads 20 people to talk to with about five on an investor presentation and we knew about half of

28:46 them would go into deep due diligence and and we knew a certain percentage of that last group would actually uh invest we had it down to a sign so we basically knew our numbers and executed on those numbers it's the same thing I do in my martial arts business you know we spend x amount in marketing you know how many leads we're going to get we know how many members we're going to get J that awesome yeah knowing your numbers the um book called shut up and listen by Tillman fata he owns the Houston Rockets Rainforest Cafe and 600 restaurants he talks about that quite a bit inside of his book if anyone wants to uh pick up a good billionaire book um my last question and then we can cover any last topics you wanted to make sure get across about the Cannabis industry or or otherwise is what's kind of like a a counterintuitive lesson that's not obvious um until just recently to you like after 10,000 hours you're just like oh I can't believe that that's what I should been doing yeah um I struggle with this um I still haven't mastered it it's the PHD inmate yeah the concept of less is more there becomes a certain point in your career where it's actually not about working hard anymore in fact working too hard becomes a detriment like I look when I say PhD in my early 20s I work 7080 hour weeks when I my

30:04 early days of the Cannabis industry when I start talking about 2017 I was back to work in 70 hour weeks if I could do it over again I had to work 35 to 40 been far more strategic and I would have focused on excellent decision making um you know when you think about and study the buffets of the world you how many hours of buffet spent reading during the day it was the vast majority of his work that he was just reading guess what that did for him he got knowledge in order to make better strategic decisions where it's point in time career where it's less about hard work where it's even less the money a lot about the downsides of a big exit everybody thinks it's all positive there's a ton of negatives I the most depressing year of my life was the year after my exit believe it or not um but I would say less is more right I have to I still work too hard Richard and I try not to but it's like ingrained in me it's the old school Korean work ethic I guess um but um yeah less is more um you know working smarter versus harder my biggest breakthroughs in my life is when I said okay hold on let me take a step back let me work smarter versus harder

31:22 like like in the story I took a year off I took satic where it's was very hard for me to do that but what I did was I studied billionaires and I studied what's the most explosive industry and I prepared my entry point into this industry had I not taken that time I don't think I would have had that exit in three and a half years awesome uh Michael and I had shared a text message or two before he got up here uh but I didn't know he was going to say that it so aligns with like what we teach at investor Club being a Perpetual learning machine your comments on emotional intelligence my experience is that the wealthiest families I know instantly within less than one second they're trying to get a uh subconsciously I think they're getting this feel of like do I like this person can I trust them is what they're doing unique do they have momentum are they real like instantly they're trying to judge that just to see if they should waste their time or not and they might politely listen a little bit and excuse themselves but it's almost instant you're going to put in someone you know as harsh as ad my sound but if it's not clear what you do then almost none of it matters you're like I have no idea what he was trying to pitch me that sounds like everyone else in that Niche and um so when I was listening to about emotional intelligence that's just what I was thinking through um and I love that you said you took time to be strategic and found an explosive industry because it shows it's not an accident I talked to someone last week

32:39 and they said oh you're reading all the books from billionaires well didn't they all just inherit the money and just get lucky and I was like uh no if you read the books that's not a lot of them a lot of them are like you right it's not like you were born you know worth $10 million and had a trust fund to to launch stuff so any final comments anything you wanted to get across for today uh you want to make make sure and communicate the audience on cannabis on what you're doing next and how to work with you anything like that um I I I mean are we doing a QA because I was going to say whatever questions yeah we can grab a quick question or two whatever the the audience might have I'm happy to address I'm pretty radically transparent and can we have uh one or two in the back Rob looks like Rob's got a question thanks Michael for sharing today um just from Cannabis and a investing component does that cause like banking issue because you're involved a banking issue so um it can right so I would say um I'll answer it like this the misnomer in cannabis especially with East Coast cannabis is that we don't have bank I never operated a day in my life uh in the Cannabis sector without full Bank banking and like multiple backup Banks um where it is dicey is look you are doing something

33:58 federally illegal you know so so what happens is some banks might decide to get into the game uh there's lots of banks that say wow we're going to tiptoe into cannabis because you know there's so much more profits there then they find out oh it's a lot of work and there's compliance and we got to deal with this risk and so they'll come out so there have been times that I've opened a bank account they're cannabis friendly and then they say okay we're not in so I gota kind of deal with that but outside of that no it's actually impacted me zero you know I still have my investment accounts my bank banking accounts look the the feds will not and this is why I'm so focused on being compliant cannabis industry the feds aren't going to touch you if you're following state laws but if you're doing illegal stuff you're breaking regulations uh you become a Target you know so that's been my experience of Bing thank you why was the first year after the exit um tough so tough for you it seems like um you know you would enjoy that you would have prep for the yeah yeah I mean I think it was a little unique for me um well I don't know actually I talk to a lot of people that have exits and had the exact same experience as me um so I'd say it like this um number one you go through a bit of like this identity crisis right all of a sudden the world just starts looking you

35:14 differently and becomes uncomfortable like and there's and you know and so like for me like my identity was PhD I come from nothing I you know look I there were times where we on food the family and so look that's more of an identity of hey I'm growing I'm building I'm driving then all of a sudden the world looks at you like you've made it and then you start thinking wait a minute people think I'm like a trust fund baby like how how am I looked at you know what I mean and so you go through this identity crisis um you know like you'd think it'd be all positive but it's not all positive right your spouse starts thinking you know every time you travel 15 women are trying to get you because you've had this exit you know what mean and it's you know so it creates all these extra complexities um people come out of the woodwork they want your money you know what I mean there's tons of fake relationships I can't stand fake relationships like like opal was fun but there's also a lot of poest fake people that are there you know what I mean like so um so those aspects were very very challenging for me um and then there was this sense internally like wait a minute now you have all this money and it like for a minute throughout that 12 months

36:32 after like it disrupted my drive like I because now all of a sudden I was like wait a minute I I I can't just be building businesses I now need to focus on managing this money I now need to focus on okay doing some things with my family because I've been working a lot like it just created all this complexity all of a sudden that became like a part-time job um and nobody really talks about that stuff I I will tell you I the high percentage of Founders that have exits have had the exact same experience actually uh and and some of them dealt with some serious depression uh post the exit because all of a sudden it's like you for some you take away their favorite thing which is building because all of a sudden they don't need a building you know what I mean um so it becomes this this weird uh weird emotional Journey appreciate you Sharon think we have one last question in front Jennifer and then also alinaa in the middle in the pink shirt and then um we'll probably wrap it up I've just got one last section of my slides and we'll be wrapped up for the day for networking uh I think in the black yeah how do you see the um retail cannabis Market changing over the next few years not only with a schedule but also with all the um animus Drive Pharmaceuticals coming out yeah I think there's going to be lots of changes

37:51 um jeez there's there's so many different aspects to that so if you're talking the East Coast the East Coast is just starting to really get every state now on the east coast is legal for cannabis uh except for the Carolinas and they have pending legislation so I think the east coast is going to experience cannabis for the first time legally um I do think the feds are going to come into this I do think they'll be farmaceutical products I I don't think interstate commerce right now everything is a state-by-state ecosystem uh which is actually a huge benefit for me as an entrepreneur right because it's like I got all these states playing out and it's like the same rules of Monopoly I can apply in those States um I think um consumers are going to look at cannabis retail purchasing different over the next five to 10 years in fact it is my belief but a bold belief but I do think it's going to happen I believe we'll be buying cannabis infused drinks um at our restaurants grocery stores bars no different than alcohol I'm pretty conf uh the fastest growing product segment in cannabis right now is cannabis strings guess why Society has already said this is the destigmatized way we consume our drugs alcohol and caffeine are drugs nobody thinks of it like that but they're drugs cannabis drinks is going from one and a

39:08 half billion to uh 20 billion which is a huge growth cut trajectory in the next three and a half years that's massive growth that's just cannabis strengths being sold in dispensaries it's going to be massively bigger once it's outside of this is why we're investing in cannabis strengths Manufacturing the East Coast right now we think it's going to be a a pretty big awesome uh Alena last question and then we'll uh we'll wrap up we heard from John today how critical it is for his planing business which is real estate to have exit in mind uh when you were building cannabis business did you have exit in mind and what did it look like um when I was building a cannabis business today I have did you say an asset in mind oh an exit yes um I I actually did a lot of people get into cannabis get into exit that was my plan originally um I I originally did not plan to build two cannabis companies I sometimes wonder if I should have done that um as quick because what I did is it to it took about nine months for me to sell Nature's remedy I immediately started building Cano preneur Partners at the beginning of the sale of that exit time having another company because I felt like I was in the fourth inning in Massachusetts I got in um so I did go in with a specific

40:26 design to exit with my company now the attitude's a little different the environment's a little different what I say to the team and the board all the time is we're just building an amazing company that will stand the test of time and as the markets heat up again for Acquisitions uh m&a which will absolutely come in my opinion um we'll absolutely entertain those exits once again are we going to see you one day on on billionaires. comom you think um I don't think so Richard I'll say I have a I do have a goal um to never be a billionaire I believe or not earlier in my years I actually wanted to be a billionaire like the entrepreneur in but my belief is you know at some point enough money is enough money so my plan would be hit a certain net worth and then I just want to give everything away do I want to generate wealth the all billionaires do I do but I want to give back to society I I actually one of the things I didn't like about studying the billionaires is they're um how would I put it um they're not focused on given the amount of power that they have generated and I look at money as energy but my belief have billions upon billions of dollars that's a lot of energy and a lot of responsibility to do something with that

41:44 energy and and here's what I sadly found what a lot of the billionaires are doing with this energy most of them are just competing with each other not not all there's some great billionaires out there but but look think about it like like why did not more billionaires run for president right they're busy doing whatever the hell they want to do when they want to do it why would they want to deal with a bunch of crap right one thing I appreciate about Arnold's documentary is like he appreciated the chance to come to America so much that when he got elected his Governor he met with both sides said I want to hear everything from both sides we're going to work together and serve California and you could say that he's not honest and saying that or not genuine I think he's genuine personally but uh you're saying there should be more people like that like Arnold's created billions in value yes currently said to be a billionaire who knows like you're you're saying someone like that who's like you know surveying and adding value while they yes yeah I want to create billions and billions of dollars of value to society but it's like how much money do me and my family really need is kind of how I think of it so I kind of have a net worth goal in mind and after that I just want to give it away efficiently but I when I say efficiently not to a bunch of nonprofits cuz as as was talked about here profits don't solve a lot um but continue to put that back in the

43:01 businesses that actually do solve problems the way Elon Musk does right I I think that 20 or 30% more billionaires would be viewed more positively if every journalist didn't think they were the devil because when I meet them they're often so passionate about what they do just like John was they are employing people they're protecting their investors who work their whole life to get that passive income to retire they are investing in their local society and uh it's just not the Press they get it's not what makes the headlines right but I I get what you're saying I'm glad that you gave me such a smart answer instead of just maybe and then everyone claps uh it's just good to hear that perspective thank you yeah thanks Richard Michael big round of applause thank you join the family office club by visiting family offices.com we look forward to seeing you at our next live event