Editors’ Note: This is the transcript version of the podcast we posted last Wednesday.
Why we’re all invested in these stocks in the first place, is because the power of the plant has life changing, generation changing world changing possibilities.
To that end, I’m super happy to welcome my guest today, Reginald Stanfield, who is the CEO, Founder and Head Horticulturalist at JustinCredible Cultivation, which is the first non-equity black owned cannabis cultivation in Massachusetts.
And Reginald talks to us today about being an entrepreneur, the two different industries within the cannabis industry, the challenges of being a minority owner and getting access to that capital and why the cannabis industry is unique in that regard in terms of access and opportunity and the regulatory picture and the legislative picture, as we get more stops and starts in that regard.
I would say my background in cultivation had to start when I was a little kid.
During that time period, it was kind of like a side job called master of mixology, private event bartending and I kind of fell in love with being the owner and your entrepreneurship even though I’ve had done entrepreneurial things in my past life.
In my generation at that point in time what I was doing there wasn’t a big entrepreneurial wave or wasn’t even entrepreneurial courses offered at any colleges that I knew about at that time.
I quit that job at 21, the day before I was offered the CFO position, or formally offered it, I was informally offered it, but I quit the day before I was formally offered it, at 22 years old.
So instead of giving my stuff away, I started to do it for other people who wanted to do entrepreneurship, or wanted to do business, but really didn’t understand the business side of it.
And have one of us be the entrepreneur that teached the others and grow together and not make this really more so about money.
We did a bunch of — we even had a hand in a cupcake business early on in their lifestyle, alcohol company too.
And it happened that I had just got into about three, four years earlier, got into cultivating guerilla style, going to different places, shares, backyards, helping people set up grows, getting experience about how to grow.
And we named it JustinCredible, JustinCredible Cultivation, which was the theme around my business partner and myself was that everything we do is just incredible, not — and it’s like a mindset.
Like it’s a mindset everybody, at JCC is Justin and Justin is that energy you tap into that we had to tap into to get this company open and to be an entrepreneur, be somebody who was strong and independent on your own, who doesn’t settle for anything but maximum effort.
And when you’re young, and in the area, I grew up in, the understanding is either two things, you go to job, you go get a job, or you go to the military, or you go do something that leads you into the wrong path.
So for me having an understanding that I could create something and then be my own, that was something that was different.
You won’t have an article wrote about you; you won’t have any really expectation for you to return your investor money within the first five years.
That’s why people and if you look in your other business book, any other business management, they will say a company in its first three to five years, it doesn’t even breakeven, is barely even generating revenue to pay the bills in the first three to five years.
You have to have funding, before you even start, you have to have a lot of times real estate, you have to have operational, you have to know a lot of us CEOs that are in charge of these cannabis companies, especially minority ones, we have to do everything in our company.
So I get, since I’m the chance of being the CEO in the industry, I get to go to a lot of these conferences, and I get to talk and hear about people’s journeys.
And there people tell you a lot of times we’re here as an entrepreneur to under promise and over deliver.
So for instance, if I want to start a car detailing business, in order for you, as an investor to know about a car detailing business you would have to go out and talk to other car detailing businesses, or you have to do some type of census search that would give you roundabout idea about how much a car service building, these charges are making.
So when you’re also asking for a lot of money, and cultivation is something that is completely different than manufacturing and retail, because you’re asking for a lot of money upfront.
So they’re expecting, if what you’re talking about, and you’re able to make these numbers, they’re expecting you to have this high value product no matter what, because the numbers should be at a return on their money.
And a lot of times, it’s impossible to make a plan, and then get funding in that method.
RS-JC: Yeah, 100% you can — and then that also changes the price for a pound, also changes –we have COVID now that has fast tracked everything and has made things very volatile.
There’s no reason why New York and my opinion before COVID was doing the wall, one of the longest drawn-out processes of getting people on line, and then as soon as COVID hit after it settle down, boom New Yorker was online, and New Mexico is also online now, Texas and Arkansas are talking about common law.
So all these states are going to use that tax revenue to bail them out from the stimulus checks or whatever things they have more annoying to basically a lot of people, a lot of businesses shutting down and things like, that they’re going to use a tax money to subsidize a lot of that stuff.
So now once you have Massachusetts, New York, Vermont, coming online, Maine coming online now, all three of our areas, although our price goes down.
So that does and if you’re already in a state that costs a lot of money per square foot to build, now you’re adding to that because you have supply chain issues.
But there is an underlining difference between when I have sat down and have a conversation with white and white entrepreneurs and black entrepreneurs, there’s a vast difference.
We have a better opportunity where we are the only black cultivators viewed, they were not going to be only vape carts doing this at all.
So we had a upper hand in investment, but the difference is we had — we barely raised any capital, or had access to raise that capital where they started their entire business off fully funded and had access to capital.
So not alone, did I had to get the license, maintain the license, I’d also then sell the product, grow the product, help churn the product.
I had to do everything myself, and then I still had to give up a lot of my company to even get that little bit of funding.
And that’s why a lot of times when I talk, I don’t talk for social equity, because I’m not a proponent of giving somebody money because of where they’re from, or where they at.
And not even — I didn’t even make excuses like we moved people from other states and put our resumes like my head hunter coach is a African American male from Minnesota, after trying for six months to find one in Massachusetts.
Why are the state, why isn’t the state wanting to put all these resources behind me so that I don’t have to now keep giving away more and more equity in order to just live in order to survive.
They can start off with a fully sustainable cultivation, so that not they can grow a product that is now able to compete in the market.
RS: And would you say that is the lack of parity in the industry, from what I hear you saying, and from my understanding, is there’s this systemic racism, that contributes to inequality and lack of equal opportunity.
And there’s obviously a way for the people that are benefiting from that, to change it or tweak it, but obviously, it’s this self-fulfilling successful cycle.
RS-JC: I mean, I don’t think a lot of my colleagues that are similar to me would, they will be as bold as to say that, but I do — I mean, I do agree there, if you look in a lot of these other industries, minorities flourish.
They started saying, like, hey you had a great GPA, you was top of your class, you’ve been these programs. I’m going to choose you to come into my school.
Even my school, Bowie State, it is many day from when I attended, and I’m talking about 90 day I think they built over 10 buildings since I graduated, and that’s nine years ago.
And then the real thing is — the real thing is, so it’s so much of a regulated market, that what you’re asking for is the same exact reason why they’re having a battle with the SATs, and the school system.
So when you have a cannabis industry that is made up, and the regulations have such complexities, that only certain people can understand them that you’re only going to get a certain type of person to go into that industry.
Why, when you go to look at me, for example who is a MSO, who’s in Oregon, in Minnesota, who grew up in Chicago, in Texas, you can go look at Will, William Perry, who is a cultivator in Oregon, and he grew up in New York, and his story different.
Why do we all have to sleep on somebody’s couch or sleep in our shop or live in an RV or give away a lot of our company or do all these things to jump over the shoes, but then you go look at our counterparts and they’re getting money from this — I mean, they’re getting loads of money.
If I had a huge conversation on LinkedIn, that if the government really wants to help out the minorities, then get rid of this, all these regulations around the recreational market, create a medical industry and say this medical industry is for people and you don’t have to have a car, but this is for people who want their cannabis tested.
But if I want to make the conscious life choice to eat better food, organic food, pesticides free food, I go to a business that gives me that.
Cannabis is not a drug, is not this plutonium that needs to be highly regulated, that needs to be grown and tested and have inspectors pop up.
So if you really want a fair market, you can just deregulate it, make it not a drug and then allow people who are growing in their homes, or growing it illegally or illicitly now to compete, because I guarantee you if we can start shipping some of these cannabis from these illegal grows in California and basements and stuff like this, the Curaleafs, the Trulieve and LivWell, and Crescos, all of those can’t compete.
You don’t mean like, they’re the cookies and all of that? Where did it start from a guy in his apartment? So why can I only grow things or come from a registered business? It doesn’t make any sense.
And I mean, you’re creating an industry that my people are having an amazing hard time entering to and then you’re saying you’re going to give it back to the minorities or help benefit the minorities.
We have something called our anaerobic bacteria , which means that anything that’s a bacteria, that is grown, and can be — after 10,000 of them can make you fail.
So now that you have all this over regulation, it takes all this stuff for me to grow it, I have to put it — I can’t use any of the things that I would naturally use.
Like we don’t use beneficial pests, that fly in poop because you’ll fail a test with a poop going around bud, or they poop on your bud? Where — I mean, that’s what cannabis is.
And I’ve to put all these on, I wouldn’t say unnatural, but they’re unnatural, I have to put all these negative, all this UV and all I mean, all these extra things that I want to get into to make the grow environment sterilized every second, so that I don’t fail the test.
RS: No, I was just going to say do you feel like that’s why a lot of people from like, the legacy market, the people that have been a part of the cannabis culture for many years have been complaining about like the cannabis that’s coming out now is just like, not what they want to be.
And they sat me down, and I tell him, I’ve been growing in the shed in front of my building, trying to get used to Massachusetts, like I send myself a test and I pass all the tests.
I mean like cannabis is a level that we want it now or the connoisseur is wanting now, it’s like building a Ferrari by hand, you know what I mean or a hand stitched coat.
I heard at one point I would bet on some things that would happen in the cannabis industry, but as of right now, in a political climate of America, like things are changing every two years, the way it seems. So, it’s really hard to keep up pace.
So that could be the truth like it could drop down in two years, but by three years, four years, but by then we have 50-40 states recreational and you can grow 12 plants in your house and almost every state there won’t — there won’t be a recreational market.
Everybody who — even people who don’t know how to grow, you give them a plant, you give them a setup, they will turn into a grower and they will love it.
And then everybody is growing like really great cannabis because you the lights are — the LED lights are putting out way more power using way less power.
So, there’s multiple avenues for somebody who knows nothing about cannabis, to in a year have a crop that is good enough for you to smoke and be better than what you get at dispensary.
You got plants at your house and you take care of — when you take care of your harvest, when you harvest there’s not a — you don’t have to make money from them.
Yeah, I mean, — he doesn’t really, or just like the candy lady around the neighborhood back in the day, like she didn’t sell candy because she wanted to.
And I had one of my neighbors who was so fun on cakes, she would sell certain things, but they will be so cheap, because she enjoyed doing it.
So now think about it, if you have everybody that’s able to grow growing in a basement and they’re growing pounds of pounds of weed, and now they have 10 pounds of weed sitting in their basement.
RS: So would you consider yourself an activist/entrepreneur? Because I mean, what you’re saying is like an entrepreneur would say.
There’s Laury Lucien from Massachusetts, Devin Alexander, they are out there changing laws and, doing things like that.
So you’re talking about somebody who relies on a plan for their mental health or their physical health, to I mean, to just tend to party like, instead of drinking and getting too drunk, like I’d rather smoke.
So as long as I know, we’ve been here, at the same time as cannabis, and we’ve been using it in medicine and in food and things like that forever.
So why is it now that a group of people support it, and a group of people can vote on it? That is not okay.
Who wouldn’t — couldn’t even name the difference between Blue Dream and I don’t know — a Lemon Haze, which if you’re — if you’re a grower you’re a smoker, you can tell the difference, just playing — you don’t even need to be a cultivator.
That’s why I say them first, like, I work closely with them every day in OI , and I appreciate the work that they do in our industry, but this industry should not be theirs and they shouldn’t be the number one cannabis company in the United States.
RS: I like it too.
You can go to support or — if there’s not one of those go to support the dispensaries that carry the product of the minority-owned which Major Bloom does a lot of projects for other places or look for their product.
They sell it at the Boston Garden and Athol you can buy Levo machines, you go on Amazon and get one you can make your own edibles.
Stop having those people on your shows like all I see is podcast people trying to get their shine from having the Curaleaf people representatives on their podcasts or having the Cresco people on their podcast, having the people who are highlighted, like I don’t know — I’m not going to name any name but a lot of the bigger black or minority owned companies that have already made it.
There’s people like, like I said, Rebecca, who has community gardens around Detroit, who get actually have done more in the city of Detroit than any other nonprofit that has in the last few years, go support them.
A lot of us do know how to do business but the major — our major holdup is that we have to chase capital.
I had to do the architectural plan myself, I had to do so many things myself, because I couldn’t split my time up.
You get, what I mean, like, there’s people like me, that want to empower, not just alone, the lower level, but I want to meet people who can leave me, go run another company who can go run another grow.
And investors just try to find people like me, like those names I named out that are ready to take over the industry, that are ready to go full speed and just need money.
RS: So within this because I hear you completely.
RS-JC: I mean, optimistic point is that there’s more and more states are coming on, and it’s faster for minorities to get licensed.
So in that aspect, I’m really optimistic and really hopeful that we’re going to come together and create the change that we need.
So it’s like, I don’t see why in America, it would just change over, the next couple of years where we’ve been in a process of a systemic racism before our country’s inception.
Like as soon as you saw the first drop of legal cannabis, anybody who is incarcerated without a what they call, a violent cannabis charge or violent charge in his locker for cannabis, it doesn’t matter if you’re — if you had 1,000 pounds, and you’re trying to sell to across everywhere, that shouldn’t matter.
You should be let out of jail, if you did not sell to minors, and you did not do anything violent with cannabis.
So how do we — where’s the change in 2022? Where’s the change? So I don’t see, I can be optimistic that America just wakes up and changes overnight, that the states just wake up and change overnight, when they could literally, they wanted to they can make a change and they’re not.
And you started telling people you can’t leave your house as you started signing these mandates.
Biden’s showed me how easy it is to come in here and give away protections to the Indians and Native Americans and certain people, certain gender groups and certain sexualities, LGBTQ plus community.
But they’re not signing any law that can least just a little bit benefit the minority owners and I mean minority people, black people to be in general.
Yeah, it’s really mind blowing what’s happening and how frustrating it is like, how do you — are you encouraged by kind of the power that you have, that you can cultivate within yourself like as a strong person who’s trying to create change.
RS-JC: I mean, because I’m — not to be too arrogant, but I’m an incredible individual like I’ve knew since I was 15 that I’m here to make a change.
She’s the hardest industry I’ve ever been in and I’ve done like say audio visual for huge stadiums, for the new Atlanta Falcons stadium that we just built in Atlanta.
I call Ulysses and those who are actively trying to, but I’m optimistic that my circle and my group will continue fighting and that we won’t fail.
I know, I won’t fail doing what I’m doing, but that doesn’t mean that it’s an easy road ahead.
I’m hopeful that there’s investors out there that listen to this podcast, or listen to any podcast, and do want to make a change, because there’s businesses here that you guys can dump money into, these $2 million or $100 million funds that are going to, I don’t know where it’s going.
RS: Amen Selah.
RS-JC: Okay, so I’m currently going through a big moment though since I’ll say about November of my past investors to get more support.
We’re just trying to be a great brand, that when people use smoke our flower, or smoke a vape card that was used with our flower, contained with another brand you know that you’re getting something that’s just incredible, like the name says.
RS-JC: Yeah, I mean, once everything works out the way I wanted to JustinCredible will go from me, and JustinCredible Cultivation to JustinCredible.
And you know and I know that flower, I know where that story started from, I know where the money is going to, all the way down to you know that the executives are paid correctly.
But I will say one of the things that I’ve always loved about being a cannabis connoisseur, and I think kind of being attracted to the plant and feeling like part of that community has been, how it allows me to like look at the world a little bit differently than just like the regular way of looking at things, and to be inspired a little bit more.
And I hope to be doing the part I know that it’s an imperfect process because I know I’m going to be talking to people that might not be doing it the best way and I know that that’s part of the investing community and that’s part of like something we all have to kind of manage and deal with.
But I celebrate and appreciate like the fight that you’re fighting and the perspective that you’re coming from.
We are in all of Curaleaf locations, we are at Western Front we will be at Mellow and we’re at Mellow location and Anvil, Major Blown, always, all the time.
And I’ve said things in his interview that some people may not be happy about or could heard something, but I have to speak out about truth.
And I think people like you give people like me the opportunity to come on this platform and say, hey, investors, you guys are investing your money wrong.
I don’t think I spent any of this conversation here talking about or maybe 1% talking about my product itself, it’s all about the market.
RS: Absolutely, absolutely.
Yeah, here’s hoping that next time we talk, I hope we talk next time and it’s a little bit better than it was today.
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I’m long Trulieve Khiron, IsraCann Biosciences, The Parent Company, Ayr Wellness, and the ETF, MSOS.