Ecosystem Secrets: How Premier Cannabis Brands Scale ft. Nate D

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Bryan Fields: What's up guys, welcome back to The Dime. I'm Bryan Fields, and with me as always is Kellan Finney. And this week we've got a very special guest, Nate D — a man of many, many hats. What's going on, Nate? Thanks for taking the time. How are you doing today? Nate D: Good, thank you guys for having us. Doing really well — really excited to be here. It's nice to have a loyal West Coaster back on the podcast. How are you doing today, Bryan? Bryan Fields: Yeah, I'm stoked. Before we started, we were trying to figure out how to categorize you, Nate — even though you've got a ton of opportunities here on the East Coast, we're going to put you on the record: a little East Coast/West Coast battle. Where does your loyalty lie? Nate D: Oh man, I love them both, but I'm loyal to the soil — you know, where I was born and raised. So I'm a West Coast native for sure. Bryan Fields: I love it. So for our listeners, can you give a little background on yourself and how you found your way into the cannabis space? Nate D: Yeah, so I'm a co-founder of three businesses across three verticals. We have one company called Turn — Turn is a vaporizer company with a proprietary device. I also have a flower company, which is one of my favorite businesses because I'm a smoker till I die — I mean, I smoke every day, so I'm a weed connoisseur — that one's called Made. And then we have a really cool project that I like to be working on that also involves flower, called Project Pax. Bryan Fields: I love it, I love it. So just from how they're all structured, how you spend your time, and kind of the origin of them — did one start first and the others evolve to solve problems? Walk us through the whole concept. Nate D: Yeah, so they all kind of work together as a synergy, which is really nice for me — almost like an ecosystem, which helps me a lot running all three. Turn is predominantly a vape resin system. That one's really nice and easy — we use live resin, live rosin, and obviously we have distillate with botanical terpenes, so we try to cover all three vape verticals. I spend a lot of time on that one. Then we have Made, which is purely a hundred percent flower — all eighths, pre-rolls, and some rosin products too. And then Project Pax is a really cool dynamic on top of it — it allows other brands that have really big hype and loyalty, like Wizard Trees or Doja, and what we do is we take over cultivation assets in other states. I have no ego about it — I'd love to say my brand's big enough to eat up all the canopy space, but we all know it's very hard to do that in these big facilities, and that's why a lot of them fail. So what we do is bring in a lot of our friends' brands — people who trust us. We have a badass cultivation team, and my business partner is one of the best growers out there. What we do is grow all their flower, all their genetics — basically grow it from A to Z, all the way to selling it. Bryan Fields: It's kind of like an incubator for startups, right? How did you guys come up with that idea? That's really cool. Nate D: Yeah, so Project Pax basically came about just off of — I looked at my partner, he had a brand, I had a brand, and we had this facility: 800 lights, in Arizona. It's a huge facility pumping out tons of weed, and no matter how big your brand is, it's very hard to sell that much weed recreationally, especially in a state like Arizona — there's roughly 200 dispensaries, it's not like California. So what we decided to do was call up all our friends and say, hey, we have this facility, I have this idea, what do you think? They all know me from that side of the business, and they all know Jordan — Jordan owns a company called Blueprint Cannabis, and they know he grows really quality flower here on the West Coast. And they were like, let's do it. It was really organic — we just picked up the phones, we had this opportunity, and we started calling our friends. On that platform we have Made, which is my brand; Blueprint, which is Jordan's brand; we have Doja, we have Wizard Trees, and Preferred Gardens. So a lot of California natives that we brought into Arizona. Bryan Fields: It's super smart, right? There are a few aspects I want to highlight. There's the trust aspect — the ability to call up your friends and say, here's an opportunity. But also from the customer standpoint, they get to see a bunch of really popular brands, which helps turn over the store and the product fast and generates buzz. I think one of the biggest challenges in this industry is when you have a single brand trying to expand into different states — it's extremely challenging finding the right spot, the right partners, the right capital. So aligning all of that has let your team accelerate the pace of growing into other states. Is that the hardest part about scaling a business? Nate D: Actually, the toughest part I've learned in cannabis is scaling cultivation. You can scale vapes very easily, and even with the best cultivation team, there are going to be problems. We're a year and a half into that facility, and it was trial and error for three, four months. The biggest challenge for us was — could we have put lower-quality weed in our friends' jars, or our own jars? Yes, but that's why they trusted us, and that's something we don't do at all. We care about our friends' brands like they're our own, so I'm extra big on QC. I want to make sure our third-party partner brands get the best love and are taken care of. That was a really big challenge when we launched this platform — making sure QC was on point, because we're growing over a hundred different genetics in that facility, and every single one grows differently, acts differently. It's like having a bunch of kids running around a facility, and you're figuring out how to react to each one and pair them up — these ones grow alike, so let's put them in the same room. It was very challenging figuring out how to take everyone's different genetics and get them to work within one program. Bryan Fields: So how do you do that? And on the flip side, is it difficult managing all the personalities and interests, and staying close enough to each brand's vision to make sure it meets their standards on a regular basis? Because that's really difficult to do. Nate D: Yeah. We have weekly conversations with a lot of the brands, making sure we're on point — that our sales team is doing what it can do best, that our marketing team is helping push the product inside the state. When we started, a lot of the brands would tour the facility often to come look at the flower, because California to Arizona is a quick hour flight — basically like being stuck in traffic in LA, so it's not too bad. They'd come and QC the flower, but now they trust us — they're like, all right, they've got it. For me, I'm never one to just put anything into a jar. It has to hit those QC standards — not just look and smell, but smokability is our biggest one. We batch-test every single batch to make sure it smokes well before it ever hits a jar. QC is really big for us. Bryan Fields: No, go ahead, go ahead. Nate D: I was just going to say, the biggest part is juggling all these genetics. It took time for us to figure it out — like I said, a year and a half into this project, we're finally at the point where we know these strains from a given brand work well in this room, these ones grow similarly — these hazes, these Red Dragons, Super Silver Haze, Blue Dream — all right, we're putting those in one room together. So we can adapt really quickly once we know which genetics go well with each other. Bryan Fields: How did you guys come up with your QC standards? Everyone has a different flavor palette — did you all get together and say, here are the metrics, here's how we define smokability? Some people like a really heavy cough when they hit a blunt, some people don't — so how did you establish that as a group? Nate D: Yeah, so what we did originally with all the brands — our cultivation team first worked closely with the cultivators from each brand, asking how everything grows, how it's supposed to look, what it should look like at week six, what to do from there. That was step one — really understanding how all the plants grow. From there, obviously everyone's taste is completely different, so we try to get as close as possible to what the original cultivators' organic profile is. You can get pretty close, but a batch in California versus a batch in Florida versus a batch in Arizona will taste slightly different — we all use different nutrients at each facility, but we try to use the best of the best. The main thing we focus on is making sure it looks the same, because that's what a lot of retail customers buy off of — they buy off bag appeal and what the genetics are known for. That was honestly the hardest part — making sure we get the look of the strains right every single time. Bryan Fields: I love it. So from California to Arizona, what was the next state? Nate D: Project Pax is only in Arizona right now. We're working on another deal on the East Coast — in Pennsylvania, and also out in New Jersey — bringing that house-of-brands model to those states. Turn, my other company, is a proprietary vaporizer company — it looks like Apple AirPods, this is the pink version right here. We're in California, we're in Arizona, we just launched in Pennsylvania on that platform — I'll be out there in the next two months, really excited about that. It's a medical market now, hoping to go recreational soon. And we're actively working on getting into New York. Bryan Fields: I love it. So hypothetically, if an MSO with operations in seven states says, "Nate, we'd love to partner up" — is part of what you bring to the table the ability to say, I've got this vape brand, I've also got a flower brand, and I've got the collective model I can bring in? Nate D: Yeah, it's all of them. That's what's nice about the ecosystem — Turn is the easiest one to scale, because it's just, hey, let's see what your oil tastes like, we go out and work with other cultivators. That one's the easy one. We do get a lot of opportunities pushed toward us for cultivation deals, but as I said, that's the hardest part of scaling cannabis — cultivation. We've learned that Turn can grow and expand really rapidly, but cultivation is much more step-by-step — we don't want to take on too much. We've had opportunities from MSOs to bring all our verticals into all their states, which is exciting, but the biggest hesitancy is the inability to meet our QA/QC standards at that pace. For cultivation, that's our biggest constraint — QC standards. A lot of people have asked us to license the brand name, but for us on the cultivation side, we have to be personally involved. I won't do a licensing deal on our own brands unless it's someone I know personally who grows fire — I'm all in with them. For us, it's making sure our team is actually running the cultivation, not just doing a pure licensing deal, because unless you have people caring for your brand like it's their own, it falls apart. A lot of people in other states just want the brand power — they want something to put on the shelf, and it's very short-lived. As we all know in sales, it's easy to get in the door but hard to keep selling. People forget that — a brand might sell the first time, but if the customer gets a bad jar, they're never buying that product again. Bryan Fields: A hundred percent. You work so hard to build brand credibility, and you can lose it almost instantly. So the balance between scaling at the right speed and protecting quality is really difficult. How do you balance your time? Because you've got one side of the business that can just catch fire and scale super quickly, and the other side you almost have to hold up like it's still learning to walk. Nate D: Unfortunately, all the babies are in their infant stages right now — one's one year old, one's one year old, one's two years old, but they're all pretty close together. I'd say it's a testament to our team. There are fires — don't get me wrong, I had five of them this morning — but for us it's really about making sure we have a strong team, people you can trust to handle the brand, the operations, and cultivation at scale. It would be nearly impossible to manage my time if I had to do all of it myself, but we put a lot of trust in our team. Having a strong, loyal team behind you can turn the business into a rocket ship, because they're in it to win it with you. As far as my time, I'd say it's spread pretty equally, with a little more right now on Made, just because it's in earlier stages. Turn we started about two years ago — we're at roughly 70 employees now across a couple of different states, so that one runs a bit more on its own, with more upper management to handle the fires. Things still happen, don't get me wrong, but a lot of my focus right now is on Made and the cultivation side. Bryan Fields: Is there a thought that if one of your employees on Turn is a true star and keeps taking on more, you'd move them into a more elevated role overseeing the whole collective? Nate D: Yeah. All the companies operate independently — they each have their own COOs, their own marketing, everything independent. But there has been some movement across our companies. For me, I'm all about internal growth — I want to build careers. I was given that opportunity myself, and I'm sure we'll talk about the person who really brought me up in this industry and put me in touch with these opportunities — that person gave me a lot, and I like giving that back, creating careers, helping someone go from hourly to a big salary position. So if we see someone thriving in one of the businesses and there's a growth opportunity or better pay in another, I'll talk to my partners, get their blessing, and move that person around. All my partners think the same way — we always want to build careers, because when you build careers for the people behind you, they work that much harder for you. Bryan Fields: Especially in an industry like ours, with endless challenges — and given that you're spreading different businesses across different states, each with its own unique elements, you could take someone thriving in one role and put them into a completely different challenge, all within the same umbrella. That's a lot to manage. Nate D: Yeah, for sure, absolutely. Some of my employees are hybrids — they help across teams. Especially the Made and Project Pax teams, they're almost in sync, very close, they help each other out constantly. Same thing with Turn — Turn in Arizona is where Project Pax is headquartered, so Project Pax gave Turn a platform to launch in that state, and they all helped each other out. Arizona is probably the state where all three of our businesses are closest together of anywhere we operate, since each business has a presence there. I actually spend two to three days a week in Arizona because all three of my businesses are there. Bryan Fields: What's the biggest challenge with scaling cultivation — is it personnel, experience, trust? For people who think, why isn't it as easy as just adding a few more lights and more product? Nate D: Personnel, for sure. When you scale cultivation, it's tough — when you hire cultivators in other states, each one has their own recipe, their own formula. When we scale into a new state, sometimes the cultivators we hire slip back into their old habits instead of sticking to our format. Not a bad thing necessarily, but it happens over and over, and it's the hardest part to manage. Then there's environmental factors — even running an indoor facility, the outside climate still changes conditions inside. Post-production is the craziest part — when we first launched in Arizona, we tried to run the same post-production process we used in California, and the weed came out dry as anything. Those are the biggest challenges: post-production, finding personnel, and training people to run the same SOPs you have in other states. Bryan Fields: The reason I ask is because it's a constant refrain on Twitter — "it's not that hard, just do X." Hearing from someone who's actually tried it and knows that even if you open six more facilities, the missing piece is always the personnel side. Nate D: Absolutely. It's about people you trust — that's the biggest thing. A lot can slip through the cracks, especially in cultivation. The thing about cultivation is it's not something you can just fix mid-stream. If something detrimental happens in week four — the AC or the dehumidifiers didn't hit the right levels — you're stuck with that outcome all the way through. Your quality has already changed. So you have to watch every single step like a hawk, because there's no real turning back. There's a little room to course-correct, but if there's a really big mess-up, it sticks with you, and you're stuck looking at a product that isn't good for the three months it takes to get to market. Bryan Fields: And I think another huge, overlooked aspect is that just because you can grow it doesn't mean it all sells at the perfect time — from a curing standpoint, when the consumer's going to have the best experience. There are all these downstream factors that influence it. Nate D: Yeah, it's crazy — we'll think a product is going to hit, we're all stoked about it, this is going to be our next big move, then we put it in the market and no one likes it. We've definitely had things we thought were really good just not land — that's the challenge of any market. You can have the best brand, the best marketing, and still flop on a product launch; some of the biggest brands in the world have done that. It hurts, because you're convinced this is the one, and then it flops. It doesn't happen often, but we go through it — we think we have something really cool, a new product or new strain, and it just doesn't hit like we wanted. Sometimes it's just timing, or random circumstance. Bryan Fields: I imagine, working with all these incredible cultivators and brands who've done amazing things, there's an endless stream of ideas for collabs and crosses. How do you balance that — deciding, okay, these ideas work, let's put resources toward R&D? What does that look like? Nate D: I was actually just having this exact conversation this morning — about R&D programming in cultivation. To really develop a strain properly takes a full year, and people don't understand how much that actually costs. You're running multiple different phenotypes through multiple different cycles before you even get to a production run. It's crazy how expensive it is to launch a new strain program, and you can spend a full year on R&D and still have it not work out. As far as collaborations and figuring out what the next hot thing is, we lean on our team — we're not the ones on the ground floor in the market and sales day to day, so we rely heavily on data. We look at where the market's trending, what's selling, what consumers are buying, and we ask our retailers for a lot of that data — what are the hottest strains right now. We rely on data to make choices as best as we can. As much as I like to go with my gut, you have to use data to make sure you're on point for the next few months. Bryan Fields: Are there trends you see on a state-by-state basis — California moves first, then Florida, then Arizona? Nate D: Yeah. For Turn, we do all new SKU launches in California first — we think California is one of the tougher markets, with a lot of competition and a lot to work through. So we test product development in Turn in California first, and if it's successful there, we roll it out to the rest of the states. Same with flower — if something works really well in California, we'll try it in Arizona, but we've seen things that worked in California not work in Arizona, or vice versa. Sometimes something doesn't do well in California, so we'll launch it in another state instead and it does great. Going back to the R&D program — in Arizona, we can spend so much time developing a new strain, and then what we actually see is that our number-one selling strain, no lie, is Super Silver Haze. It's fire, don't get me wrong, but it's an OG strain, and I see that same trend even in California now. I've got friends growing on the East Coast seeing the same thing — those OG strains that built the industry back in the day are coming back. Blue Dream — I used to laugh at people still growing Blue Dream five or six years ago, and now it's popular again. We're seeing a lot of hazes come back too — J1, basically Jack Herer. Remember the first time you ever smelled Jack, ten-plus years ago — that insane smell? Ask someone who's only known it the last six years, and it's just "oh yeah, I've heard of that," but I think cannabis is still very early in its adoption curve. New consumers are walking into retail stores and smelling something like Jack for the first time, and their eyes light up — they gravitate toward those loud, dominant-nosed strains. Those OG-type strains with the loudest smell — I've been seeing the market trend back toward that. Bryan Fields: A hundred percent — and I can only imagine, if I smelled those things, it would bring me right back to when I first started smoking. Maybe that's part of the experience — you smell something and you're instantly transported to a different part of your life. Nate D: Of course, it's nostalgia, honestly. I remember the first batch of Jack we regrew about a year ago, and I was like, this is crazy, I miss this smell. My business partner looked at me like he couldn't believe I was saying that, but man, it just took me right back. Just like we were talking about — Super Silver Haze, J1 — those genetics are some of our top-selling strains in states like Arizona. Bryan Fields: Is there ever a conversation with people close to you — obviously we can get into your relationship with Caleb — but with someone like him, such a paramount figure in California, do you talk through the direction of the industry and which strains to pursue together, or does he take his own parallel approach? Nate D: Yeah, me and Caleb have a really interesting relationship. I'd say Caleb is a mentor — he's literally one of my best friends, and he opened up a platform for me. We talk very often about our companies and where we're headed, probably two or three times on the phone a week, and we text every day, so it's a very close relationship. We work together on strategy and what the market looks like — I'll run things by him, he'll bounce ideas off me. That's the great thing about this community, and not just with Caleb — cannabis has one of the closest-knit brand communities. I'll talk to people from other big businesses and get their feedback too, and most people don't mind sharing what's working for them and what's going on in the market. I lean on my friends in this industry as much as I can — what's working for you, what have you seen, who's a good payer, who's not. We're always bouncing ideas off each other. Bryan Fields: That kind of influence is so important, because it comes back to trust, which is a huge challenge in this industry — so many people have been burned taking leaps of faith on relationships that didn't work out, so having that kind of ally matters a lot. And from a consumer standpoint, when brands are aligned directionally, it's beneficial for a consumer who's still figuring out what they want. What's something you tried that completely failed, that you were shocked failed? Nate D: Going back to a strain drop — this one still haunts me. It was a year and a half of pure trial and error. We went through something like 1,200 seeds, testing phenotype after phenotype, thinking, this is the one, this is the one — a year and a half — and it just never worked out. It hurt so much. And then on Turn's side, we usually keep about 24 flavors stable on the menu at any time, and we're always trying new ones — we have a mixologist who takes different terp profiles and live resin and tries to mix things up. Some hit really well, and some nobody liked. It's a challenge, but at least on the vape side, if one run doesn't work out, you're not stuck with three more harvests of it already planted, not knowing what to do with it. Bryan Fields: Did that deter you at all from continuing that R&D approach? Nate D: No, man — problems happen, challenges happen. You can't give up after one miss, and I've had more than one. You just can't quit — that's the nature of this industry. There are going to be numerous problems, all kinds of issues, and if you gave up after every challenge, there'd be a lot of giving up. You just have to keep going. You can't let one mess-up in cultivation, or trimming, or post-production, or a flavor that doesn't land, stop you. It's going to happen — there's a problem every single week. You've got to keep pushing through. Bryan Fields: Are there strains that don't turn out great from a flower experience, but you know they're going to slap once you turn them into oil? And if so, how do you manage that — knowing the flower isn't perfect, but it's a great plant for Turn? Nate D: Yeah, we've actually done that — we run collaborations between the brands around exactly that. We had this Honey Banana strain that we grew, and it looked terrible — no bag appeal at all, kind of ugly. We tried releasing it and it didn't sell — we got good feedback that it tasted great, but as we know, it still has to look decent, because consumers buy with their eyes first. It's like buying fruit — if one looks brown, you're picking the other one. Cannabis purchases are driven by look and smell. But it worked out to our benefit, because we can take that biomass, freeze it fresh, and process it into oil — and it turned out great. That Honey Banana flavor is actually one of our top-selling flavors in Turn now, because the terpene and taste profile is phenomenal. That's the great thing about having a good ecosystem between the brands — something might not work out in cultivation, but we can freeze it fresh, process it into oil through Turn, and do a collaboration out of it. Bryan Fields: It's funny thinking about my own purchasing habits — it's not the prettiest logic, but at the end of the day, why is that such an influential factor? Is there ever a thought to putting something into a pre-roll so consumers don't see the flower itself? Nate D: Yeah, sometimes — majority of the time what we'll do is process it, and especially on the flower side, I like offering all the formats: pre-rolls, eighths, half-ounces. When we launch a strain, I want to launch it across all of them. There have been times we've launched something predominantly as pre-rolls, but for me, I'm a connoisseur smoker — we make pre-rolls, but there's nothing better than rolling your own. You can use a grinder and pack a cone, but it never smokes quite the same as rolling it yourself. There have been R&D programs where we've put something straight into pre-rolls just to sample it and get feedback, but we've never released something that only went straight to pre-roll. Bryan Fields: Is there a brand you're not working with that you're a big fan of — one where every time you're out, you're checking to see what they're putting out? Nate D: Yeah, of course. I'm a huge 710 Labs fan — I love their products, they're phenomenal. And going back to that East Coast/West Coast loyalty question — I'm loyal to the soil, and I love watching what Connected and Alien Labs do. They're some of the biggest brands in the country, and from my history with them, I know how much they put into those brands — it's amazing how many new genetics they release, how many strains they put out. Ted, the founder of Alien Labs, is a huge weed nerd, and a nerd in general — he's a good friend of mine, I love that guy. His creative mind is insane — what he and his team put out is huge. Alien Labs is the sickest cannabis brand, in my opinion — there's no sicker brand out there. Shout out to Ted. Bryan Fields: I think the element I learned from them that I didn't fully appreciate was the R&D piece — when Caleb was talking about how long and how much they spend on that, it blew my mind. And knowing your own lineage, coming up under that tree, I imagine that's exactly why bringing serious R&D into what you're doing now feels so critical. Nate D: Yeah, it is. That's actually who I was talking to this morning — Caleb, about the R&D program, how much it costs to really develop a strain properly. We were literally talking about what hits and what doesn't. It's heartbreaking — you spend a year and a half, two years developing a strain, and if it doesn't hit, it stings. But you can't let it put you down. You've got to keep pushing forward. Bryan Fields: No, especially in this industry, persistence is key. At the end of the day, you just have to keep persisting. I think the toughest part of all that is — a lot of times it's genuinely really good weed, and maybe the consumer just didn't connect with the name, or the timing was off by a couple months. It's wild, because a lot of times it really is good weed. Nate D: Yeah, exactly. If we'd dropped some of these Super Silver Haze, Blue Dream-type strains two years ago, people would've been like, what is this? And now those old-school genetics are back, while the candy-flavored strains that were huge are cooling off — even though some of my friends on the other side of the business still say candies are their number-one seller. That's just not as big in the true recreational market — there's still demand for things like Lemon Cherry Gelato, but it's not as dominant on the rec side as it is elsewhere. And cannabis doesn't grow instantly — you can't just flip a trend on immediately. It takes time. Bryan Fields: It's crazy too, because sometimes all a consumer is doing is evaluating how a product looks, how they intuitively feel about it, and the price — and those elements alone decide whether they pick option A or option B. Nate D: Yeah, for sure. That's the R&D grind — you spend all that time developing something for a full year, and then you don't launch it until the following year, and by then what was cool last year isn't cool this year. It's almost like fashion — what's cool with clothing one year isn't the next. You've got to be fast and quick, and that's really tough with cultivation timelines. Bryan Fields: Tell me something that's true that nobody agrees with you on. Nate D: Man, that's a tough, loaded question. I'd say... effort. I'm a very persistent person, and a lot of our team — if they get told no once or twice, they give up, and I'm very big on continuing to push. That's a core part of the sales culture in our organization — a lot of people think one or two no's means it's over, that that's the final answer. It carries over into cultivation and product development too — just because something doesn't work now doesn't mean you stop. You can't give up after the first try. Bryan Fields: What would you do if you had to start another business, outside your area of expertise in cannabis? Nate D: I'd hire people smarter than me — people who know that field, that industry. You can't think you're going to be the best at everything. It's so important to hire people smarter than you, and I think a lot of founders and CEOs let their ego convince them they're the smartest person in the room. Going into any new market or brand, hire a strong core team, and hire people who are smarter than you. Bryan Fields: What's your go-to hobby to turn it all off? Nate D: As much as I'd love to do it more often, I love snowboarding — rolling up a real blunt, not a hemp blunt, nice grape flavor, and going snowboarding. Or, if the weather's good — I'm originally from Northern California, near Sacramento, where lakes and rivers are a big deal — jumping on a wakeboard. Anything active on a board is one of my favorite things to do. Bryan Fields: Dream smoking session — three people, dead or alive. Nate D: That's a tough one. I'd love to smoke with Martha Stewart, I think that'd be a fun session. Al Capone, I'd love to smoke with him too. And lastly, I'd probably say Ice Cube — I don't know why, I'd just love to get inside that guy's brain. Bryan Fields: What question do you wish more people asked you? Nate D: Are you asking about the industry, or just in general? Bryan Fields: Whichever comes to mind first. Nate D: For the industry, I love when people ask about resources, or ask about what's going to do well going forward — instead of what's currently doing well. I like when people reframe it to get deeper — instead of talking about what's happening right now, let's talk about how to forecast and plan for what's going to be relevant in the next six to twelve months. I think a lot of us focus on the now and don't spend enough time focused on the future, and how we can work together toward it. Bryan Fields: Twelve months from now, what's popular? Nate D: That's a tough one, I honestly don't know. A couple years ago we all thought beverages were going to be huge during COVID. My partner Rob, on the Turn side — he's our chief product officer and co-founder — is constantly doing new product development, so I lean on him a lot for that. But I really don't know what's next. We've got a bunch of new product development in the pipeline — new SKUs, new hardware for Turn — and we're doing a lot of cool stuff with Project Pax and Made. Like we talked about, we're always hoping the new things hit, knowing one or two won't, but we put in the time and energy to try to make sure they do. Bryan Fields: Is there an underrated piece of information about California that most people wouldn't know? Nate D: Resources. California is one of the biggest markets in the industry, and it's about being willing to lean on your resources. A lot of people are too afraid to ask questions of their competitors, assuming they'll get bad information just because they're competitors. If you can make it in California, you can really make it in any other state — California has been through every wave, every up and down. I think people don't ask enough questions in California, and that knowledge is exactly what would help them scale into other states. Bryan Fields: Last question, Nate. What's the single biggest lesson you've learned in cannabis? Nate D: Trust. Bryan Fields: Absolutely. Nate D: I've got to give a big shout-out — we've mentioned his name a few times — Caleb, a brother from another mother. He really taught me to rely on people through trust. Back when we started in this industry, we didn't have contracts, we didn't have the dotted lines everyone signs today — it really came down to your word and shaking someone's hand. Being a loyal person, being someone people know they can trust, and also being willing to extend trust to others. Bryan Fields: I love it. Nate, for our listeners who want to get in touch, buy Made or Turn, or get involved with Project Pax — where can they find you? Nate D: Just check out our websites. Turn's website is turn.me — it'll show you where all of our product is located throughout the country. Made is the same — you can look us up at madeforsmokers.com and it'll tell you where our product is. For Project Pax, all the brands underneath it are predominantly available in Arizona, plus a couple of other states we're expanding into. Bryan Fields: I appreciate you taking the time, this was a lot of fun. Nate D: Yeah, thank you guys, appreciate it.