This week, Rob Sechrist, president of the Pelorus Equity Group, discusses his role leading one of the cannabis industry's largest commercial real estate lenders. 

Sechrist has focused on the cannabis industry for more than four years, but the company has been in business for more than two decades. Since 1991, Pelorus has participated in more than $1 billion of commercial real estate investment business across 5,000 transactions.

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This week, Colin Ferrian, co-founder and analyst at MJResearchCo, discusses why, as an investment analyst, he is working to generate more empathy for the cannabis industry. 

Empathy in the cannabis industry is rare, especially among the investment community. According to Ferrian, the industry has two types of people: those with money — investment capital — and those with experience. Ferrian works as a hybrid that can steer capital i...

This week, Zach Pitts, CEO and founding partner of Ganja Goddess, discusses graduating during a recession and stumbling into a cannabis career that has now spanned more than 13 years.

When Pitts graduated from college, he pursued a career in urban planning, but he failed to find regular work. In 2007, developers weren’t hiring and he was at a loss. Around the same time, Tara Wells, Ganja Goddess’ co-founder, was cultivating and manu...

This week, Jill Ellsworth, founder and CEO of Willow Industries, talks about her transformation from running a successful cold-pressed juice company to creating startup Willow Industries, a manufacturer and service provider dedicated to cannabis decontamination.

Ellsworth is a registered dietician with a Master’s degree in food science nutrition. About seven years ago, she started a cold press juice company in Santa Barbara, Califor...

This week, Andrew Lange, president of Ascendant Management, discusses his work designing more than 1.5 million square feet of indoor cannabis facilities across more than 56 projects. When he started out, he primarily saw smaller projects of less than 20,000 square feet, but as the ‌industry has evolved, he now rarely works on anything less than 50,000 square feet.

Lange started off in Washington state building fully automated aquari...

This week, Jesse Elkins, founder of Grow Industries, discusses how he became one of the most sought-after designers of cannabis cultivation and manufacturing facilities.

Much of Elkins' story is being at the right place at the right time. When he graduated high school in Washington State, he enrolled in refrigeration school to become an HVAC professional. At the same time, the state legalized medical-use cannabis. A few of his f...

This week, Bryan Wilson, co-founder and president of Environmental Living Industries (E.L.I.), discusses his journey from an overseas government contractor to the driving force behind an industrial hemp fiber processing startup.

Wilson's wife, Candice, was a pediatric emergency nurse. A few years after the couple was married, Candice became incredibly ill, suffering from several autoimmune disorders. At the time, Wilson was wor...

This week, John Davis, CTO of Entexs, discusses his move from the oil and gas industry to the helm of an engineering and fabrication company focused on end-to-end extraction systems. 

Entexs (pronounced "en-techs") was founded with the sole purpose of providing custom engineered extraction solutions for the cannabis industry. The company assembled a team of machinists, fabricators and engineers with decades of experience bui...

This week, Jeremy Luciano, founder and CEO of GHS Industries — formerly Global Hemp Solutions — tells the incredible story of his journey to the cannabis industry. 

GHS conceptualizes, designs, builds and installs everything from buckers and drying systems to harvesters and extraction systems. Although the company works in the hemp sector, it is a food-grade manufacturer that also serves other industries. 

Luciano founded the company...

This week, Ash Ganley, CEO of GrowRay Technologies, discusses his collaborative manufacturing R&D effort to create patented LED lighting solutions for cannabis cultivation.

Ganley is the former CTO of NOBO, a small, vertically integrated multi-state operator based in Boulder, Colorado. During his time at the cultivator, he observed the fractured, isolated nature of cannabis cultivation product development, particularly in lighti...

This week, Ben and Vinnie Celani, co-founders of High Life Farms, discuss their operations in California and Michigan — and continued expansion.

The brothers take a divide-and-conquer approach to operations, with Vinnie overseeing sales and marketing and Ben leading the cultivation side of the multi-state operator (MSO).

High Life primarily conducts cultivation, manufacturing and distribution in California, while its Michigan operati...

This week, Josh Malman, vice president of cultivation at Jushi Holdings, discusses how he fell into cannabis.

As a student, Malman studied international horticulture, and even spent a semester abroad building systems to provide cheap water to local farms in Africa. 

His focus on greenhouse production horticulture eventually led him to a position with The Clinic in Colorado as it was starting up in 2009. When he first started with The...

This week, Donna Wamsley, Director of Research and Analytics at SōRSE Technology, discusses her role at one of the leading emulsion technologists in the industry, as well as the many difficulties in working with cannabinoids in the food and beverage industry.

Cannabinoids (like THC and CBD) offer a sensory experience that can vary. Dosage control is difficult to make reliable and repeatable, as well as onset and duration, which pres...

This week, Dr. David Cunic, CEO and founder of UCS Advisors, discusses his life as a medical professional and serial entrepreneur. In the industry, he's known as "Dr. David," and he's been a cannabis advocate since 2009 — "before it was cool to be in cannabis."

As a doctor of physical therapy and pain management, he is an advocate for the benefits of medical marijuana. As an entrepreneur, he has started seven...

This week, Bella McCreary, president and CEO of High Maintenance Trim Co. talks about her transition from the banking industry to leading a company that provides onsite harvesting, bucking, trimming and packaging services.

McCreary has several years experience working with cultivators of all sizes. She's overseen trimming operations for harvests as small as 12 pounds as well as clients with rolling 500-pound harvests. 

Cultivator...

Hosted by David Mantey.

This week, Mike McDonald, president of Ammonite, discusses his fascinating path to the cannabis industry following careers in cycling and outdoor adventuring, as well as stint in Taiwan, where he moved after college just to learn Mandarin.

Ammonite was spun out of Jetty Extracts, one of the largest concentrates and vapes companies in California. Jetty’s product development department had created a new device t...

This week, MCR Labs President Michael Kahn and Director of Business Development Jonathan Wani discuss how they protect cannabis consumers and help manufacturers improve — and protect — their businesses.

The company started in 2013 when Kahn left his role as a chemist in the pharmaceutical industry to create a public health-centered lab that provides accurate cannabis data.

Kahn wanted MCR to be more than a traditional lab, which ofte...

This week, Sannel Patel, the senior vice president of engineering at Ozone Solutions, discusses how his company designs and manufactures custom products that use "lightning in a box" to sanitize cannabis operations.

The company started in odor remediation, primarily targeting hog farms — which have a pretty notorious scent. The company has since gone on to create more than 400 ozone generators, monitors and injection systems...

This week, Lezli Engelking, founder of the Foundation of Cannabis Unified Standards (FOCUS) discusses why she left her successful career running a dispensary to create an organization dedicated to developing cannabis-specific good manufacturing practices. 

As Bloom Dispensaries went from single-digit employees to a staff in the triple digits, Engelking realized that the Arizona company desperately needed business help. If her vertic...