CannabisCMO Week 7 - Weed doesn't sell itself.
Tap in for this week's cannabis marketing headlines and read an excerpt from the upcoming book, "Weed Doesn't Sell Itself".
The following is an excerpt from the introduction of my upcoming book “Weed Doesn’t Sell Itself” which is set to be released in 2024.
You can be one of the first to get a FREE digital copy by signing up today.
I grew up in the D.A.R.E.generation, the evolution of Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” era, where they used to send a “cool” cop to your school to talk to you about the dangers of drugs and the importance of resisting peer pressure.
At least that’s what I imagine they talked to us about – all I remember is that our particular officer was a pretty short dude who had a bushy mustache and drove an early 90’s model Mustang with a dope picture of Robocop painted on the hood that all the kids at my school thought was the coolest thing ever.
One way or another, growing up in the 90’s, I found myself indoctrinated into the propaganda of the drug war and would carry that D.A.R.E. mindset with me – shaming friends who consumed cannabis – until a few weeks after I graduated high school when I found myself rolling around in the kitchen of a friend’s apartment laughing hysterically after doing knife hits off their stove (IYKYK).
I will always remember that night as the night the first brick in my wall of ignorance came tumbling down.
It opened my eyes to the idea that I had been lied to my entire life and that cannabis wasn’t a dangerous drug to be feared but as I would learn later, it was something that brought my grandparents together as they laughed and watched movies together at night. It was also a medicine that helped my family members alleviate the aches and pains that came with wearing your body down for a paycheck.
I would eventually find out that my grandparents and my parents, all four of which I lived with, had been smoking weed my entire childhood but as responsible consumers, kept it out of sight of us kids.
Later that same summer, my Dad came home from work as a union laborer and tossed me a sandwich baggie full of some sweet smelling BC Big Bud and told me that if I could help him get rid of it that we could both make some money and smoke for free.
With some phone calls and some coded flip phone text messages, I managed to get rid of enough for my Dad and I to split some for ourselves and each make a couple of bucks. Less than a week later I found myself in a McDonald’s parking lot, waiting to re-up from his buddy.
Little did I know that the summer after I graduated high school would be the beginning of a 17-year journey of dedicating my life to selling cannabis and using the free time it afforded me to help end marijuana prohibition.
A few years later, while attending Western Oregon University, I got an internship with the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) where I was in charge of cataloging correspondences from members of Congress as well as helping to produce their daily podcast/live stream called NORML Show Live, which had evolved from its original name “NORML Daily Audio Stash”.
It was during this time as an intern for NORML that I learned the power of social media and content marketing, even if I didn’t think of it as “marketing” back then.
I even remember one of my mentors Russ Belville giving a presentation at the 2012 national NORML Conference about the power of 'crowdsourcing’, a term that few people knew back then but that helped Russ raise money from his audience around the country to send us to the conference that year.
At Western Oregon, I majored in political science but dropped out (for the second time) to start a political action committee called Oregonians for Law Reform to raise money for legalization in Oregon. My friend Sam Chapman and I decided to start the PAC because major donors who were giving millions of dollars to the campaigns in Washington and Colorado were staying away from the campaign in Oregon.
As co-director of this PAC, I was in charge of writing the press releases that ultimately got us coverage in some of the largest outlets in the state — but I had never actually written a press release before that.
We also used social media to organize advocates around the state, including posting photos from different cities as we went on a road trip to deliver campaign signs to various advocates. In about 8 weeks we managed to help raise the polling of the measure from around 37% in the second week of September to 46.5% on election night.
This was the first time I ever organized a political campaign largely on the internet and although we didn’t pass the measure, we managed to raise over $10,000 in small dollar donations, put up several billboards around Portland and team up with a popular progressive blog at the time called Firedoglake to organize a digital phone bank in the lead up to the election.
Ultimately, legalization wasn’t successful in Oregon in 2012, but a year later, after the passage of HB3460 which legalized medical cannabis dispensaries in Oregon, I decided I was going to try and open one myself.
I had been selling weed to friends and friends of friends while working the drive thru at Taco Bell, but there came a time where because of my connections to some of the best growers in the state, I was selling higher quality flower than a lot of my competition — but not everyone in my circle wanted (or most importantly could afford) to pay a premium.
So one night, after a few dabs and a rant about how I was tired of selling weed to people who didn’t appreciate the quality I was curating, I decided to open up a spreadsheet and start doing some math on how much I could get pounds for and how much I could break them down to sell in a dispensary setting.
My thought was that people who bought weed in a dispensary would care more about quality and curation and therefore would be willing to pay more for it.
Some of that was true but I soon learned that running a successful dispensary is so much more than having a paper napkin business plan and a spreadsheet of hopes and dreams.
You need a strategy.
That’s why I decided to write Weed Doesn’t Sell Itself, to help others learn what I didn’t know 10 years ago when I was 25, starting a dispensary with no business or marketing background…because weed doesn’t actually sell itself.
Cannabis Industry Blogs + More Headlines:
What Changes Will 2023 Bring For Cannabis Advertising On Google? - Herb
From Budtender to Dispensary Owner - Cannabis Business Times
Hitting The Sweet Spot: Cannabis x Marketing - The lobsterpot
High fashion? Cannabis brands expanding their reach with apparel - MJ Business Insights
Five Marketing Mistakes Cannabis Companies Should Avoid - Ganjapreneur
Gumbo Brands And New York’s #1 Radio Station Hot 97 Partner To Launch New Series “Gumbo Studios” - Respect my Region
Celebrating The Intersection Of Black Culture And Cannabis - Grasslands
So What’s The Connection Between Cannabis, Twitter and Marvel? - High Rise Podcast
Proven Ways to Segment Your Email List and Boost Results - CannaBiz Media
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