5 years ago I left my job to start selling weed with some guys I grew up with.

Our first year we sold $1.2M to dispensaries a pound at a time.

This year we'll do $70M in CPGs.

Millions of jars, joints, gummies, cookies, carts.

Here's what we did:

2016, pre-recreational canna in OR

You could grow and have a dispensary- but no framework to distribute

So we stacked medical cards. This gave us a grey area to carry weight.

We knew if we had network of stores, we could sell in anything.

Flower is how we built the channel.

Up til this point, I had spent most of my career building client’s consumer brands, it was time to get busy.

We started with prerolls because they’re such a crap shoot. Half the joints you buy are un-useable.

We did rigorous R&D and launched the perfect preroll: STICKS.

By 2017 we had a fleet and needed a bigger boat.

We scaled up manufacturing, and "the flood" crushed the market.

Every October, every outdoor farm in the state pulls down fields of weed at the same time.

The business was 80% flower at this point, and prices halved overnight.

We lost $500k in Q4 of 2017.

We laid off people, we couldn't pay our bills.

It was the hardest 6 mos of my life.

I drove to work everyday visualizing spring time and telling myself I was built for this shit.

I’m built for this shit. The obstacle is the way.

More brands, more lines, more life.

We launched Cabana, a premium preroll, and Beaucoup, a candy line.

We shifted from branding around categories (preroll, edible) to branding around shelves.

STICKS = Value
Cabana = Premium
Beaucoup - still just candy lol

We’re doing CPG now.

The capital needed to scale a low margin business like this is mind boggling.

We had another rough winter under our belt, and knew that it wasn’t gonna work to keep bootstrapping.

We connected w/ the co-founder of Kush Supply ($KSHB) and formed our holding company, Unrivaled.

Enter Korova.

Some brands are made, some are born.

We made STICKS, Cabana and Beaucoup.

Korova was born out of culture. It's fucking awesome.

It's a top 5 brand in California today, and our 800lb gorilla.

So, this first round of M&A brought together:

Cash
LTRMN - Oregon operation + brand(s)
Korova - California operation + brand
10 Spot - 2 retail licenses in Santa Ana

The 19 month regulatory approval process on the transactions was clunky and painful.

Integrating while trying to scale multiple facilities was hard af.

The T shirts from our Feb 2020 summit read "I No Longer Fear Hell."

My biggest contribution leading that integration may have been this Change Curve graphic and instituting "LFG" as our battle cry.

We did it though.

Korova, STICKS and Cabana in stores up and down the west coast.

Manufacturing facilities in OR and CA.

Distro hubs in Portland, Oakland, and LA.

Booming retail in Socal.

Licensees in Oklahoma and Arizona.

We finished 2020 north of $40M in revenues.

In March, we announced we're going public via 50/50 merger with Pubco Terra Tech.

The deal gives us cultivation and more retail in California and a hell of a launch pad to continue building generational cannabis brands.

Going public isn't the finish line, it's the beginning.

This month I'm doing a thread a day about building cannabis brands. This thread was a primer to give you the lay of the land.

If you want more, follow me >> @landforce

To get it organized in your inbox >> https://landforce.co/sub 

We're gonna be getting in the weeds. Pun!!