The Good. The Bad. And The Ugly - Branding Bud Live - Episode 5

THE SUMMARY

David and Adriana enjoy a thought-provoking conversation (and a poke in the eye) with Brett Puffenbarger, VP of Marketing, Green Check Verified, and cannabis industry influencer. Hot topics include sexism in the industry, the infamous "T-shirt guys" from MJBizCon, and hard drug use at cannabis events. Branding Bud Live launches a new audience participation game - "Puff of Pass".

THE CO-HOSTS

David Paleschuck, Adriana Hemans

THE SPECIAL GUEST

Brett Puffenbarger, VP, Greencheck Verified

THE FULL TRANSCRIPT

David Paleschuck 

Welcome to Branding Bud Live, the livestream that’s 100% THC and 0% WTF.  Every week we speak with business people about the business of cannabis. I’m David Paleschuck, founder of Branding Bud Consulting Group and author of the first book on cannabis branding. I’m joined by my co-host Adriana Hemans, a Marketing executive with over 8 years in the cannabis business and we’re here to talk cannabis branding. Hi Adriana!

Adriana: 

Hi David. Thank you for that intro. I’m so excited to co-host the show with you. We’re bringing amazing guests from across the cannabis ecosystem to share their perspectives. What makes our show unique is that we focus on building a community - and we encourage audience participation. It’s not just about us talking, it’s about all of us building something together. So feel free to drop your questions and/or opinions in the chat, and in a minute, we’ll share them too.

David Paleschuck 

Our guest today is a man who bridges the gap between the bong and the boardroom. Brett Puffenbarger always gives us the straight dope on the cannabis industry and writes candidly about the challenges facing it. He wrote a summary of MJBiz that brought up a lot of broader themes that are worth exploring. We want to dig into it. This is not a recap of the event, but rather an exploration of where the industry is headed.

I'll start off by saying our guest is Brett Puffenbarger. Brett is, you know, as you know, a LinkedIn cannabis industry influencer. Brett just lays it out there. And he just tells it, like he sees it. And we're here today to talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly relative to the state of the cannabis industry. There were some things that really stuck out. And that demanded a little deeper conversation than maybe actually three days of posting is. So let's introduce Brett, the man who bridges the gap between the bong and the boardroom. He's currently the VP of Marketing at Greencheck Verified. And he is one of the serious thought leaders in the industry. He is without a doubt, an instigator and protagonist.

Adriana Hemans 

And we rely on him to deliver the straight dope.

David Paleschuck 

That's right. So put your glasses on, so we don't get poked in the eye. Let's bring your Brett into the conversation.

Adriana Hemans 

Love it. Hey, Brett. I think most everybody who is here watching knows of you, but let's just hear from you. Tell us a little bit about your background. And what are you passionate about?

Brett Puffenbarger 

As David mentioned, I'm currently the Vice President of Marketing at Green check verified. I don't ever really know what to say when people asked me this. Before cannabis I was a in the military worked at Harley Davidson for about a decade made the jump into cannabis when Florida first went legal bounced around a good bit since then I'm extremely happy to have found a home bringing banking to cannabis companies having jumped from the operator side into the ancillary service side. It's really rather rewarding to be able to service the community that I still consider myself to be a part of in a meaningful way. And yeah, as everybody kind of knows, you could probably find me every day talking about something usually moderately controversial on LinkedIn.

David Paleschuck 

Obviously, you have 1000s of followers on LinkedIn, and people care about what you say. And you care about what they say. You engage as much as they engage, and that's pretty spectacular. Tell us about that.

Brett Puffenbarger 

So I don't know if I've ever told this story publicly before work. But growing a LinkedIn following was quite literally the subject of my master's thesis. So I set out I did a master's in public relations. And I set out as kind of a mission to prove that social media is a PR function, which is kind of funny. But I posted about that this morning and had no idea that we were about to talk about it now. So it was, I guess you could call intentional, right? I set out to build a following. I don't know if I set out to be an influencer or a thought leader if I even it through in that way. And I don't necessarily like the moniker even to this day. I do, however, love people. And I like interacting with people. And I kind of have this thirst for knowledge and conversation and discourse. And truth be told, where better can you do that than LinkedIn, where it's a platform full of experts, you take a hard stance, and you watch the comments go wild, right? It's like having a front-row seat to rooms that most people wish they could be in, right? Oh, if I could only be in a fly on the wall? Well, those two hashed it out. You can do it every day if you know how. And I think that's probably more important than anything I ever post. It's the conversations that come from the post that I enjoyed the most anyways.

David Paleschuck 

I love that there's really unparalleled access to experts on LinkedIn, and people who are opinionated, too, which is great. So should we do our first audience participation? Are you all ready? I feel like our attendees are warmed up.

Adriana Hemans 

Now that we’re warmed up, don’t forget to check out David’s book, “Branding Bud, The Commercialization of Cannabis”, the bestselling book in two (2) categories (“Branding & Logo Design” and “Green Business”) on Amazon. You can find out more and purchase the book here:

https://www.amazon.com/Branding-Bud-Commercialization-David-Paleschuck/dp/1936807513

David Paleschuck 

Let's get back to the show. Shall we?

Adriana Hemans 

According to a report from MJBiz Daily, the percentage of women and non-white executives in the cannabis industry…

A. is increasing yearly
B. remaining stagnant
C. is decreasing yearly.

As our audience is reviewing the options, here is some background on the study. Every year for the past 4 years, MJBiz Daily has released a report on diversity in the cannabis industry. They collect survey data about the demographic makeup of professionals in the industry, and how it changes year over year. Additionally, as part of this report, they interview with BIPOC leaders, with questions about their personal stories and their thoughts on the state of diversity in the industry.

David Paleschuck 

We're asking this question, because this was one of the hot button questions, that came out of, race and gender and equity within the cannabis industry. So, we're asking this, really, relative to, I think what was seen at MJBiz is, and certainly one of the many things that you brought up.

Adriana Hemans 

I'm seeing a lot of C's, I'm seeing quite a few B's, a couple A's. I feel like folks are kind of divided on this one. This was a tricky one. It sounds like thank you die hero, maybe I'm being a naive dreamer. But regardless, I believe cannabis can do this.

David Paleschuck 

All right, let's see, let's reveal the answer is B it is staying basically stagnant. So as you can see, from this chart here, there was sort of a big surge of non-white executives and women coming in in 2019. And then a dramatic dip in 2021. And it's basically like, held steady since then. Interesting.

David Paleschuck 

It is interesting. So, you know, I guess, this stat, read some of the things you brought up. Some of the things we saw online as hot button were the t-shirt, guys. Do you think sexism exists in the industry? And just to add on to that, is it any different than any other industry?

Brett Puffenbarger 

100% Yeah, it does. I think it's pretty safe to say all of the isms probably exist within the industry. I'd also say I think it it's kind of hard to say the industry when it's very disparate, right? There's very different cultures. What flies in Florida is not anywhere similar to what happens in California or Massachusetts. So Without getting too far into the weeds on breaking that down. I think sexism exists in a couple of different ways in the industry pretty heavily. I think we can see it from numbers like that. But I think we can also see it in a lot of the bro culture behavior we still see prevalent. And I mean that in both the like, boat shoes in blazers, bro culture version, and I also mean it in like the flat brands and cargo shorts version, very different flavors of it, but heavily the same. I mean, I've seen it in my own life, my wife works in the industry, we work together on things. I've seen some pretty ridiculous stuff that comes out of that. And I won't name names on that. But let's just say there's stuff that I was shocked no matter how much I think it's present. It's shocking. And I think we could take it in the social equity angle to let's just call it like it is a lot of the social equity programs aren't actually designed to help the social equity applicants. They're designed to make them purchase vehicles for the larger corporate entities that lobbied for those things to be in place. So I think there's a lot of a lot of the isms show up in both direct and obvious and indirect and in obvious ways. 100%

Adriana Hemans 

Yeah, I agree with you on that. And my take on it, too, is like we are slightly below what other industries are in terms of women being executives, I think that this was also in the MJBiz report that the incidents like, overall US is like 29% majority owned businesses of women. And in the cannabis industry, it's like in the teens, which I feel like it should be the opposite. Right? Like we should be a more progressive, forward thinking industry, not one that may be falling behind what's happening elsewhere.

David Paleschuck 

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I never thought I'd hear myself say the words I'm about to say, but it's, funny. You spoke about dress, you spoke about blazers, and you spoke about hats and beards. And it's really interesting, because, you know, we joked earlier about Aaron Salles being twice confused for you. I was actually sitting at the MJBiz at the Cosmo bar. And I even joked because there were three or four people wearing hats and beards. And you know, I was not in the suit. But I was somewhere in between and somebody else was wearing a suit. And it's funny, it's I just want to throw this out. I think it's dangerous when we call out what people wear and judge them. And I know, that's not really what you're doing. But I just want to point out that you could talk about hoodies in a very interesting way and have people think you're talking about other things. So we should just be careful how we categorize we should be careful about how we judge people. The truth is you and Aaron do look similar. You both have beards and wear flat-brimmed hats. And if I just judged you as “bros”, if I didn't know you, that would be terrible, because the two of you are my dearest friends, and are some of the brightest people in the industry. So, I just want to point that out that it goes both ways. And we should be really mindful about “bros” and categorizing anybody or any group can be dangerous.

Adriana Hemans 

Well said, David, I want to throw in a comment that someone posted. Many companies are hiring women and minorities, just to say they are doing it and then parking them in the corner. Thank you for your comment.

David Paleschuck 

Jody Rouen also mentioned, women are leaving the industry and then alarming rate for a reason. And that's that, that's too bad. I mean, that's, that's sad to hear. Brett, just to just to continue on that, are the t shirts symptomatic. We could talk about the cause or the symptoms, but the t shirt guys were over the top.

Adriana Hemans 

So buy weed from rich white men, and obviously this is in response to that. You know, to the bags and the other shirts of, you know, buy weed from women. So, and it's amazing because this has caused debate on both sides, you know, is it parity? Is it sexism? Is it both? You know, Brett talk talking about this, what are your thoughts? What do you think this?

Brett Puffenbarger 

I think it's a really, really bad attempt at irony or humor or social commentary. I don't know, a lot of background on it beyond that. My initial thought was, oh, they're trying to poke at the rich white man community, right? Like they are. I'll use the term and I don't care if it bothers anybody. They're trying to poke the Chad's right. That's what I originally saw it as. And then the more I thought about it, I was like, sometimes the message might be lost, based on the context of it. And I really think that's what's happening here, though, I have talked to a few people about it. And I've gotten a little bit of more background. Part of me thinks it's intentionally inflammatory. And I know a lot of people probably still believe the adage, oh, all PR is good PR, if you do it. Right. Right. attention is attention. And we're all trying very hard to avoid that. I don't think I don't think this landed with anybody. Right? Like, I don't know, anybody that thinks it was funny. I don't know anybody that has made any sort of purchasing decision toward them based on it. And I think, you know, thank the world for that. Right? Like, obviously, the intention was to gain eyeballs, they achieved it. But they didn't get the fringe benefit of it, right. Like, there's the whole PR theory or marketing theory, even that, everything you say is going to bother a certain amount of people. And if you do take a hard stance, you're going to pull a certain group in more, even if you're alienating another group, right? Just kind of inadvertent, we see it in politics all the time we see it and all sorts of things. I think maybe they were trying to go for that. And just far left field failure.

Adriana Hemans 

Your background in PR, is it true that all publicity is good publicity?

Brett Puffenbarger 

It can be if you know how to use it. Absolutely. There are ways like a I would never advise this company in any way. There were ways that they could have flipped this to be a major positive. As far as I can tell, they haven't done any of those things. But they could have been used. Yeah, there are ways that you could have used the negative attention to say, I'm so glad you hate me right now. I'm not that I want to draw attention on that let us aim our vigor at the real culprit and implement social change or raise money for a thing or there are ways to do it. I do it all the time on LinkedIn. Right? Like I will throw out a mildly controversial thing and take a really hard stance, even if I don't necessarily 100% believe it. Like even if I'm not as vigorous in my belief of it, to gain conversation starting to gain the attention to pointed at something else. This was not that. I wish it was that in some way. But it's not.

David Paleschuck 

interesting, because there's a fine, fine line where PR can turn into crisis management, right? You know, it's just that you take one step over the fulcrum, and the seesaw just goes the other the other way. But, but yeah, I definitely, I definitely think they, they were seeking attention. And they got it, whether it was the attention they wanted or not, it's a different story. You know, it's funny, I'll say, when I first saw, you know, buy weed from women, my first thought was, you know, buy quality weed from quality people. And then when I saw this shirt, it came up again. And the more I think about my response was almost it. I hate to say this, but it's almost like an All Lives Matter thing in my head that went off like, wait a second, why are we wearing T shirts that separate people? But I understand now we're, we're, you know, those that wear those T shirts or carry the bags are doing it to make a point and

Adriana Hemans 

to show that we're creating an inclusive culture, and people are welcome. And as we were talking about earlier, those things need to be stated because we still have a lot of work to do as a nation but also within our own industry. We're not even caught up to the national average.

David Paleschuck 

And I think I think now if I could throw this out there like hey, if you're a man, go out and buy one of those buy weed from women T shirts, and be that be that guy in the industry. And let's flip it over because it takes the good guys to offset. The guys that don't quite get it or don't. Or even if it takes a minute for you for them to think it through, it's important. So Brett, we you look very pensive.

Brett Puffenbarger 

I love to buy weed from women thing. And I've seen other iterations of it at smaller levels, right? Like I've seen buy weed from black people I've seen buy weed from black women, I've seen buy weed from Hispanic people. Pretty sure I saw one that said buy more weed from Asians, right. Like I've seen dozens of iterations of it. And I kind of love it, like truth be told. And I think what happens is, when people do love something, right, I think a lot of people probably support the messaging back to the numbers, right? Like, the numbers are telling. If we want to fix them, we have to support and include not just act like we are not just say we are not just making a statement piece. But hey, come back, right? Like, let's have a conversation, let's put it in, you know, put the good part in the world, encourage the parts that we want to see encourage the insert buzz word here. I do think that anytime that happens, you're going to get this kind of response. And I felt somebody said that the First Amendment is not Texas. To be clear, the First Amendment protects your right to say anything you want. It does not protect your right to not take community backlash from it. Right? Like just straight up. Nobody is saying you can't say anything, go for it, but you're going get what you get for it. There's a fine line there. We're all human beings. It's a relationship thing.

David Paleschuck 

I grew up in New York. So I'm a firm believer in the melting pot, you know, and so of us coming together. And it's interesting, I think the thing that I see is how fragmented we're, you know, we're becoming not only in the industry, which is weird, because we're, we've all found a place for ourselves in the industry. And yet, within the bubble, there's fragments, right. So it's just, I guess, I tried to look for the things that bring us together rather than the things that pull us apart, but the truth is, is you know, we have to, we have to speak about the things that pull us apart so we can start to bring ourselves together. That said, every week we have audience participation, and normally we call it “puff and pass” – but for you, we are renaming the game to, “Puffenbarger & pass”

Adriana Hemans 

I have 12 items on this index card. They're all related to cannabis consumer products. Some are concepts, some are hypothetical situations. Don't think, just respond. Guys ready? An 800 milligram edible.

David Paleschuck 

Puff. Yes.

Adriana Hemans 

Brett use that you guys disagree. This is interesting. Is it because edibles didn't work on you?

Brett Puffenbarger 

Yeah, it would do nothing for me, and it would gain massive amounts of clout, right, like

Adriana Hemans 

Bragging rights.

David Paleschuck 

And is that 800 Meg's edible all at once.

Adriana Hemans 

All at once one bite.

David Paleschuck 

Okay. Whew, all right.

Adriana Hemans 

Number two, a brand endorsement from Kanye West?

David Paleschuck 

I have to say Puff … Daddy!!! That’s a BIG pass. With a lowercase p and an uppercase ASS.

Bye bye, Kanye!

Adriana Hemans 

All right number three, free weed for veterans.

Brett Puffenbarger 

I'm a veteran. Give us the free weed man. Let's do it.

David Paleschuck 

I go with puff – but this brings back the conversation between “therapeutic” and “medical” cannabis which we'll address sometime in the future.

Adriana Hemans 

Number four. Canna-bumps and for anybody who doesn't know what that is. Its crystallized THC designed for snorting.

David Paleschuck 

PASS!

Brett Puffenbarger 

I mean, come on, who wants to put stuff up their nose? Pass.

Adriana Hemans 

All right, number five. This is a hypothetical situation MJBiz moves to New York City.

David Paleschuck 

I'll take New York City over Las Vegas, anytime.

Adriana Hemans 

Yeah, I mean, Vegas is like pretty hard to get around in, but New York City is too. Maybe it's just like an out of the frying pan into the fire situation.

Brett Puffenbarger 

I want to see it move around. Like give me a different city every year like give me Denver one year; give me Seattle. Give me New York; give me Miami like? Yeah. Like give everybody some home court advantage sometimes. Right? Like, yeah, I don't know how everybody else looks at it. But like, I look at conferences like family reunions, like David knows we get together usually the day before, if we're both showing up early, and like, check out the place. And I usually find a local friend to show me around. Give me some variety people.

Adriana Hemans 

Yeah, I totally agree. That's part of the appeal of going to a conference is getting to explore a new city. So yeah, it would be nice to see it in different spots. All right, number six, the word marijuana – puff or pass.

Brett Puffenbarger 

David, you have to go first on this one. Because you know, I have opinions.

Adriana Hemans 

Oh, this is going to be juicy one.

David Paleschuck 

Well, like I kind of said before, I'm going to say puff on the word marijuana. Because if it didn't exist, we wouldn't be able to talk through lots of the issues that surrounded so interesting. So I'm, I'm ready to get down. I'll say I'll say pop only to bring up the positive. It makes sense with everybody.

Brett Puffenbarger 

I never say the word unless it's in a joking context, or specifically for the purposes of alliteration, right. Like, if it's not that specific use case, I never say it. I will say that. A it's regulatorily required in a lot of ways. So like working in the banking world, we're beholden to very stringent usages of terminology. So we have to, I also like variety, particularly in like marketing and PR copywriting. Let me play with the alliteration. Let me play with the rhymes, let me do those things. And I can't if you limit the word. And I also think, you know, one time, David and I did a whole clubhouse room on this. And we were talking about, you know, the racist roots and the connotations. And we had a Mexican American guy, like, blast us. And he's like, Don't ever tell me, I can't say that. Again. Like, that's our word. We, you know, we use it every day. Like, stop it. And that's really stuck with me ever since. I mean, I call it cannabis or weed.

David Paleschuck 

Yeah, context is everything.

Adriana Hemans 

I think we could have a whole series just about this topic. We can. Because the like the background is really insidious, of course. And then on the other side, to your point, Brett in legal documents, in medical documents, it still exists. So there's almost a You can't escape from it, even though we use cannabis as much as we can. So it's a tricky thing to explore.

David Paleschuck 

You know, and I don't want to I don't want to say as a result of our conversation, read on clubhouse, but in that conversation, one of the things I called out was that Washington state mandates a warning. And in that warning, the word marijuana is mandated. It's verbatim the warning. So what they're doing is they're forcing people to use the word marijuana and I joked that, you know, was this state supported, you know, racism. And actually, that was taken back to the, the LCB (Liquor & Cannabis Board) here in Washington. And then now in the morning, the word marijuana has been changed to cannabis. So it's, you know, it's really interesting to see how important words All right, we'll come back to that. How important in the context and the intent that they're used.

Adriana Hemans 

Totally. All right. Ready for the next puffer pass? Number seven. Wake and bake?

David Paleschuck 

I can neither confirm nor deny.

Brett Puffenbarger

Puff.

Adriana Hemans 

Number eight. Vertical integration.

Brett Puffenbarger 

Context question forced or doing it in a horizontally integrated state?

Adriana Hemans 

Doing it in a horizontally integrated state.

Brett Puffenbarger 

Not the best move unless you're really good at everything or have a kick ass team so puff but you know buyer beware.

David Paleschuck 

Wow. Vertically integrated into horizontally integrated I'm still working on my X and Y my axis! Puff, but only if it's by choice. I'm against forced vertical integration regulatory capture that whole thing is just a house of cards.

Adriana Hemans 

All right, number nine CBD-infused pillow. This is a real product.

David Paleschuck 

Quick question. Is it a TempurPedic? Pillow?

Adriana Hemans 

I don't know. I have to get the product specs for you.

Brett Puffenbarger 

Pass.

Adriana Hemans 

All right. I'm not buying you that for Christmas then. Number 10. Testing Olympic athletes for cannabis?

Brett Puffenbarger 

Hard pass. Yeah.

David Paleschuck 

I say test only for cannabis. If you can test for prejudice and hate too.

Adriana Hemans 

All right. Number 11. Amazon to start selling weed?

Brett Puffenbarger 

Context question: Are they selling it like an Amazon essential? Or are they allowing it sold by other vendors on their platform?

Adriana Hemans 

No, they're being vertically integrated. Their Amazon's growing Amazon selling it.

David Paleschuck 

I say puff because when that happens, we have normalization. We have regulation. We have acceptance. We've got everything we've been seeking. So when it gets to that point, it’s awesome. Some people will purchase that. Brett, you and I will purchase other products in the market. But when we get to a place like that, that's kind of what we're looking for. Isn't it?

Adriana Hemans 

Interesting take on that. And anyone who's listening in feel free to chime in? What's your take Amazon's growing weed? What do you think of this hypothetical situation?

David Paleschuck 

So it's interesting, because I didn't really place that in terms of the Amazon. Whether growing it or delivering it, but rather, you know, for them to do that. What time in place we would be in and that's kind of what we're all sort of pushing for?

Adriana Hemans 

Yeah. All right. Number 12. This is the last one cannabis infused coffee.

David Paleschuck 

I’m not quite sure. I just recently was sent a sample and of cannabis infused coffee. And when I put my soy milk into it, the cannabis oils coagulated with the soy milk in a way that was pretty gross. If they can sort out the coffee and the cannabis oil, I'm there – but not until.

Adriana Hemans 

Maybe drink it black?

David Paleschuck 

I’m happy with how I consume my coffee currently. Thank you.

Adriana Hemans 

It's totally possible. I think it'll be delicious. low dose, get your day started. A lot of people do that is like their morning ritual. So I feel like it would make sense and they would grab a huge market share.

David Paleschuck 

So then we’d have to purchase our coffee from a dispensary? Seems like a stretch to me. People are VERY particular about their coffee.

Adriana Hemans 

So let's have one more question for Brett. And we're changing topics a little bit here. But we're keeping it in the realm of drugs, because that's what we're here talking about. US mentioned something about the event at MJBiz. How there was a lot of other drugs? I mean, people were drinking, but then there were other like hard drugs being passed around or handed around, or however you want to describe it. Question for you. Because you've written about this topic. I know you have an opinion on it doesn't make sense for leaders in this space in cannabis to take a hard stance against other drugs, or do you feel like we should be accepting of that?

Brett Puffenbarger 

Oh, loaded question. I'm going answer this like four different ways. Okay. One, I believe in personal responsibility and personal choice, and I don't want to be told what to do. So and I don't want to tell other people what to do. So I think all drugs should probably be illegal and regulated in some way, or at least decriminalized to a point of like, personal use and possession is not a problem. So that's number one. Number two, I think hard drugs is kind of a broad category. I think cannabis and psychedelics cannabis, technically being a psychedelic, go hand in hand, we have seen the movements move together, right like cannabis kind of opened the doorway for psychedelics in some ways. Those are normal. I don't blink an eye at seeing mushrooms or like a DMT pin anymore. Like those don't even register in my world. I just see them as part of the larger ancillary cannabis community. On the other end, I find alcoholic cannabis events to be much more unusual, common legal, I get it. There's the practicality angle. I have seen in the past interesting rubs in the way that they make people act, right like stoner says accidentally offensive thing because he's high and thinking off the top of his head drunk guy gets offended. Argument ensues. So that's never good Juju. I don't understand the uppers part at all. And to speak to the MJBiz thing specifically, I saw a dude doing coke off a mirror in the parking lot in broad daylight, like not even respectable 80s Club bathroom style like hiding in a stall like just walking through the parking lot like holding it. So the wind didn't blow it. Like, What a strange thing. I don't know if that was like, a weed industry thing necessarily, or just, hey, we're in Vegas. So I guess that kind of brings me back to the like, maybe we should rotate this bad boy and see if like, we could have more in stranger experiences walking through the parking lot and others.

Adriana Hemans 

Right. But Miami, maybe same thing. If you're going do hard drugs, keep it in this all please.

David Paleschuck 

I was I was sitting at the Cosmo and there were people doing dabs, under the table at the Cosmo. So, is it drug type? Or is it just, being in discrete?

Brett Puffenbarger 

Under the table, I had it on top of the table!

Adriana Hemans 

Brave souls out here!

Adriana Hemans 

I have one more question for Brett. And then we'll wrap up the show. Although I feel like we could go all day. Could you recommend a book a movie or an experience that cannabis business people should know about?

Brett Puffenbarger 

I think everybody should read the book Venture Deals Forever. I think it's like, top five books of all time, it breaks down how money and business structure is made at the very like, you know, foundational level and raising money through VCs and stuff. I think that one's pretty great. I don't It's not cannabis specific. But there you go.

David Paleschuck 

Yeah, and it doesn't have to be. We often talk about this. Us cannabis folk often get into our bubble, you know, and we always talk about cannabis and sometimes it's really interesting when we talk about other things because the most interesting conversations, in my opinion are the ones where, you know, people are bringing experience from other things other than cannabis and we bring it to the cannabis industry in the appliance. So yeah, those are the best things that's where that's where the sweet spot is.

Adriana Hemans 

Right. This has been such a fun interview. Thank you so much for joining us.

Brett Puffenbarger 

Truly, my pleasure.

David Paleschuck 

We’ll be back Thursday, December 15th with our guest, Tyme Ferris, Co-founder of The Pantheon Collective. Find out more about Branding Bud Live on our YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@brandingbudlive), and more about our cannabis consulting services at (https://www.brandingbud.com).

Adriana Hemans 

Once again, don’t forget to check out David’s book, “Branding Bud, The Commercialization of Cannabis”, the bestselling book in two (2) categories (“Branding & Logo Design” and “Green Business”) on Amazon. You can find out more and purchase the book here:

https://www.amazon.com/Branding-Bud-Commercialization-David-Paleschuck/dp/1936807513

If you missed any of our episodes on LinkedIn, you could find them on our Branding Bud Live YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@brandingbudlive). Find out more about our consulting services at (https://www.brandingbud.com). Thanks, everybody.

Have a great rest of your day. Bye!