Storytelling Is the Future of Cannabis IR ft Jesse Redmond

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Bryan Fields: What's up, guys? Welcome back to another episode of The Dime. I'm Bryan Fields, and with me as always is Kellan Finney. This week we've got a very special guest returning to the show, Jesse Redmond. Jesse, thanks for taking the time — how are you doing today? Jesse Redmond: I am doing great. Thank you very much for having me back. Bryan Fields: Excited. Kellan Finney: Doing really well — really excited to talk to Jesse, kind of talk all things California, investor updates, big news. How are you, Bryan? Bryan Fields: Yeah, I'm stoked. There's a lot of information we're going to break down. We're going to get Jesse to update his thesis for us, see if we can all get on the same page, and get some positive sentiment going — I'm feeling like we're going to spin this conversation today. But before we dive in, Jesse, I think it's really important — you've got a new role, head of investor relations at Leef Brands. Can you give our listeners a quick synopsis of what that looks like from a day-to-day standpoint? Jesse Redmond: Yeah, so it's really two-pronged, Bryan. My business card says head of investor relations and business development — two prongs there. The investor relations prong is really about raising awareness of the company: meeting new investors, getting introductions to analysts, updating the presentation, updating the website, and doing everything that's forward-facing for Leef Brands to raise awareness. And then the second piece is the business development side. I think those pair really well, especially in this environment, because it's a little slower on the IR side — in case you guys didn't notice, there's less interest in investing in cannabis companies right now. That gives me a bit more flexibility to work on the business development side — looking for partnerships with other companies, moving into new states like we're doing in New York, and basically finding other ways to add value to the business besides the IR side. So those are the two roles I'm straddling right now. In this environment, like I mentioned, I'm leaning a bit more into business development — we can talk about the deal we got done with Glass House Brands, which has soaked up a bunch of my time, and that's a good example of a business development deal. On the IR side, it's still active, but IR these days has changed. There are still press releases and longer-form things you do, but more and more it's about social media content, YouTube, and podcasts. I'd consider it investor relations, what I did last Friday, which is honestly the coolest part of my job — going out and visiting our farm, which is about two hours away. I drove out there and shot a bunch of content. We have an in-house guy who helps us put together some great reels and videos. So I think IR these days is straddling PR and social media, and I flex wherever there's the most need and demand for what I can help with. Bryan Fields: I think you put that perfectly — it's a balance of both sides. But the one element I want to go back to is the storytelling element of it. Content now is so 24/7, and there are so many different ways to take a marketing approach, and I love the concepts you're doing. When you're creating content, do you think about the storytelling aspect — trying to give retail investors and other investors a behind-the-scenes look at what Leef's doing, so they understand that the numbers are the numbers, but this is really what's happening behind the scenes? Jesse Redmond: Yeah, one hundred percent. I think that's the right perspective these days. Even back at Water Tower Research, when we had institutional subscribers to our research, it wasn't as stodgy as it used to be — there aren't hundred-page research reports anymore, there aren't as many dry conference calls. It's more about putting content out there: short-form content, video content, even things like the reels you guys do, where you can hit key messages in thirty or sixty seconds. I think the research world is evolving, and I think you used the right word — storytelling. Thinking about how I spent last Friday: I started out with a videographer friend in Santa Barbara, we shot some video to orient people about where we are, since that's a landmark people can get familiar with. We got in the car and drove to a town called New Cuyama, where our farm is. We shot some content in this little small Western town, then drove a couple of miles out to the ranch and got some overhead footage looking down, some video of the plants. It really was about taking people along that journey. And honestly, if you're a cannabis investor — and if you're a Leef Brands investor — I think you've been a little frustrated over the last couple of years, because we've been in a slower-growth period as we've been trying to turn this farm on. We recently announced we're entering New York, so we've got a lot of growth initiatives. Rather than just tell people those things in this environment, I think it's critical to show them. And one of the reasons Leef was a great fit for me is that I'm not only based in California, but I'm also about ninety minutes from our farm, so it gives me the ability to go out there and shoot more content. Recently we've been shooting the planting, I was out there showing the plants midway through the first harvest cycle, then we'll go back out when they're harvested, go again for the next planting, and really take people along that journey. That's not to forget the financial side — I'm a former hedge fund manager and analyst, so of course I care about the financial side. But we need to tell the story so that when the results show up, people say, 'Ah, I get it, I understand what happened here.' So for me that means: let's start telling the story now — plants going in the ground, get the first harvest done, do the second harvest, see that show up in the financials — and especially when the third-quarter financials come out, people can look back and say, 'Oh, that's the improvement they've been talking about, and I've been following along for that journey.' That's really my mindset on how I approach IR — still very focused on getting the earnings reports and more formal things out, but I do think you hit the nail on the head, Bryan. It's all about storytelling these days. Bryan Fields: I think the important thing to remember is that sometimes the financials don't tell the whole picture. When you start to see the images you're describing and people can follow along, the picture becomes way clearer — the numbers are one thing, but since they don't tell the whole story, where's the rest of it? For a lot of companies, they're missing that other element, and what you're doing is taking people through the entire journey. The best part about those photos and videos you're producing is that they're easily shareable — people can see something exciting and share it with a friend, and now somebody who wasn't familiar with Leef, or wasn't sure what was going on, has a sticky element they can point to and say, 'Look how cool this is, look at the growth of this farm, look how beautiful this is — right here in California.' Jesse Redmond: And you also need a story to tell, if we're being candid. There was another company that approached me about doing investor relations for them late last year — a bigger company, in more of a five-percent-growth mode, some new stores opening, but not a heck of a lot going on. If they'd brought someone in like me who likes to produce a lot of content, you could get around to the existing grows and stores, and there certainly would have been work to do. But think about that word — storytelling. If you look at what's happening, especially with the larger MSOs, maybe tier ones and tier twos, a lot of those stories have gotten compromised. We can talk more about why, but the lack of Schedule III, the lack of Florida, the lack of Pennsylvania has really hampered a lot of growth. Have you guys noticed that a lot of those companies have gotten quieter on social media? The CEOs aren't putting themselves out there as much anymore. So I think a good IR strategy and storytelling work best when you actually have a story to tell. Kellan Finney: I also think it's important that the story comes from the storyteller itself. You're writing and telling the story from a hedge-fund-manager background, so you can speak to a lot of points that other content creators can't right now. Jesse Redmond: Yeah, I think that's a strength, Kellan, but it also plays into one of my weaknesses, which is that I'd never created short-form video content like this before. I forced myself into it — we were talking offline about the podcast and how hard it is to listen to yourself, and it's even harder to watch yourself. So I forced myself to get better at things like podcasting just by doing it over and over again. When I was shooting those videos in Santa Barbara last week, I'd never put on a lav mic before — I just used my new iPhone, a lav mic, and had someone standing there shooting video with me. I'm out in front of the pier in Santa Barbara saying, 'Hey, I'm Jesse Redmond from Leef Brands, and we're heading to New Cuyama, California today.' That's not natural to me — I didn't do that in my former life. And I'm fifty years old, so I'm not one of the kids who can just hold up a camera and shoot a video that gets a million views on TikTok. Instead, I'm trying to find the line where I'm professional but not a total dork, and not nervous but not trying too hard. I think you get better at all of that with time, but yeah, it's been a little hard for me to get comfortable with this new content era. And you also need people to help you with it — we have an in-house team who, once I get the content together, can put together the reels and piece it all up so it looks great. But it's definitely been something new for me to learn over the last six months to a year. If you're out there with a brand or a story, I've found the only thing to do is just get started, just get going. Sometimes people message me about starting a podcast or ask about Higher Exchanges, and I tell them: we just had an idea, and we showed up. When I go back and listen to the first five or ten episodes, I cringe. Now we're at episode seventy or so — maybe seventy-five — and I feel a lot better about it. Morgan and I have hit a good stride, but the way we got there was by just showing up over and over again. I think it's the same with short-form video content. There's a guy named Colin — I don't know him personally, I just follow his content — but he inspires me by saying you never know what's going to catch, so just keep doing stuff. That's kind of what I've been trying to do: not put too much out there, but make it a bit uncomfortable and say, 'Hey, I don't know if people will hate on this, I don't know if they'll think it's stupid, but I love it, I think it's cool, so I'm going to keep putting it out there.' Bryan Fields: Do you do Cut30? Jesse Redmond: Sometimes that's nerve-wracking — at times it can be discouraging. If you've ever worked really hard on something and it gets a quarter of the views you'd hoped for... but then the flip side is you probably had things you didn't think would take off as much, and they work out great. That's just the ups and downs of this modern content-creation world we live in. Bryan Fields: Yeah — we're like, 'This is going to crush,' and then it just got crushed. Bryan Fields: Definitely want to shout out Colin and Cut30 — we can send him a bill for sponsoring the podcast. Thanks so much, Colin, for sponsoring. But I think what he illustrates perfectly, and what you brought into this, is that it doesn't matter what the company or brand is — it's how creatively you tell the story. Because you could look at Leef and think, it's an extraction company, how interesting could that be? How do you talk about such a complicated, nuanced part of the supply chain in an interesting way? And how do you tell it in a story mode that does that? I give you a ton of credit, because most people would look at that and say, 'I'm not sure how to tell that story.' Instead, you took the approach of, 'Okay, we're going to take it from beginning to end so people can see the journey,' and now you're taking a part of the supply chain that most people wouldn't consider a creative, fun storytelling subject, and putting a brand and a life behind it. Jesse Redmond: Yeah, I think that's a good observation. I think anything can be cool if you tell the story in the right way, and anything can be boring if you tell it in the wrong way. But I think you need to overlay that with honesty. If you don't have something to say, don't just be out there saying stuff for the sake of saying it, because people see through that more than ever. The more I'm just myself with my content, the better it lands. There's a Gary Vaynerchuk video — Gary V kind of makes me cringe these days, I'd unfollow him to cool off for a while — but he had a short video I really liked, where he was saying the stuff getting the most traction these days is from people who get really comfortable being themselves. He kept saying: really lean into being who you are. I think we see that in the podcast world too — it doesn't take the fanciest production. Look at Joe Rogan — for a long time his sets were pretty low-key, just two guys having a conversation, though he's obviously got a great production for what he's doing these days. But he's unapologetically who he is — he'll crack out a whiskey, crack a cigar, smoke a joint, be super serious sometimes, joke around other times. I think that's what people are attracted to, because this modern era has democratized things. I don't think we put people on a pedestal like we used to, which I think is a good thing — everybody has a shot these days. But I also think we can see through the bullshit more than ever, especially in cannabis, where we've been fooled so many times. So when we're creating content, go out there and put yourself out there consistently, but do it sincerely, and really lean in when you have something to say. If I'd joined Leef Brands last year, we wouldn't have had as much to say, and maybe the struggle you're describing, Bryan, of just focusing on the extraction piece, would've been harder. But this year we have the farm, we have New York, we have the Glass House deal, we're focused on Bitcoin — we've got a bunch of cool stuff going on. So I think you need to pair those two elements: have something going on, have something cool to say, and then lead into it with honesty and really being yourself. That last part is hard — it's really hard. It's almost easier to put on an act when you come on shows, but I've found the things that have gotten the most traction for me are when I don't over-prepare, don't overthink it, and just go out there and be myself. Because that's what we're all looking for in each other — just the best version of the other person. Bryan Fields: Has there been feedback from viewers or listeners about the storytelling — like, 'Hey Jesse, I'd love for you to expand on this,' or, 'I don't really understand this, can you elaborate?' Has there been any feedback like that? Jesse Redmond: I'd say people like seeing the video footage — in our case specifically, the farm being built. I think that's an interesting thing for anyone to watch. We've all seen a million indoor rooms and beautiful pictures of flower turning purple — that classic High Times look, gorgeous pictures of amazing flower close to harvest. But what we're doing is different — we're running a huge sungrown farm, big-ag style, at super low cost, purposed for extraction. We're not going to be selling flower; we're purposing this for extracts. That's been interesting to a lot of people. I'd say where I've gotten some pushback — I wouldn't even call it pushback so much — is that people want to see results sometimes rather than just promises. I've found there's a limit to what you can accomplish just by telling somebody what's going to happen. Cannabis has become the ultimate show-me story. Sometimes we put a ton of work into a piece about what we're going to be doing, put it out there, and it doesn't get much buzz — because everyone's so fatigued and has lost so much money waiting for things to happen. That goes back to my approach: let's tell them what we're going to do, document it, and then when it hits the financials, we can point back and say, 'This is why it happened.' Maybe the sharpest, most helpful observation I can offer is that there's a limit to what you can do right now just by promoting and telling people. What you have to do is put out the content, do the work, and not expect a ton of results in share price or interest initially. Put in the work, build the network. Because when the results do happen, people will think, 'Oh, I saw Jesse talking about this all year, and now the third-quarter financials have come out and we're really starting to see it show up in the numbers.' Kellan Finney: What's been the biggest challenge in linking all the different areas Leef does together into one succinct storytelling message? Jesse Redmond: I'd say the weirdest piece we had was the dispensary. In California, typically people like to be vertical — most of your listeners and viewers know that vertical integration leads to higher margins, because you're capturing more pieces of the chain: growing your own flower, making your own products, doing your own distribution, selling in your own stores, capturing as much of that margin as you can. We initially went down that route — we had this beautiful store called Leef El Paseo, which is kind of the Rodeo Drive of Palm Springs, actually in Palm Desert technically. That was a one-off piece that was helpful for collecting data on what products are selling and trends in the marketplace. As a California store, it was certainly in the top ten percent, maybe even the top five percent, financially — so it wasn't a bottomless pit for us. But it was an extra element where we didn't have a huge team focused on retail. We decided to cap it at that one store rather than go out and get five or ten stores. Glass House has ten stores; Gold Flora has, or had, sixteen. So it was kind of a piece off to the side that, financially, was fine and wasn't a huge distraction, but didn't fit super well into the story — because at our core, we're an extraction company that wants control of the supply chain, using low-cost cultivation to feed the extraction business. If we'd paired that with a network of ten stores down the road, that would be one thing — and I don't want to close the door on that someday — but just having the one-off store, I think, was a part of our story that wasn't a huge weakness but wasn't a huge strength either. That's one of the reasons I'm really excited to have Glass House take over the day-to-day with a managed services agreement — it cleans up our story. We can focus on our Cuyama ranch, large-scale, low-cost cultivation, feeding our extraction business and putting out bulk extracts that we sell through the large brands in California, rather than being focused on that one-off store. So that's the one piece of the puzzle that was a bit challenging for me from a storytelling perspective — but I love how it turned out, with Glass House taking that over and us getting a corresponding supply chain agreement for Glass House material as well. So the piece that was a bit cumbersome turned out to be a blessing. Bryan Fields: Before we dive into that — I'm excited to ask about it — do you think part of trading that dispensary for the biomass supply is a doubling down on specialization? Understanding what you do best, and saying, 'Right now, in today's environment, this is where we thrive and dominate — let's put all our resources here'? Jesse Redmond: One hundred percent. I'd say it's a couple of things. One, we didn't really pursue that initiative further to get a chain of five or ten retail stores. Two, we don't have many products under the Leef Brands name — we went down the brand-building road for a while and ultimately figured out that in California, it's super hard to build brands. So instead, our business is bulk extraction, and we sell our extracts to the big brands out there — Mammoth, Heavy Hitters, Kiva, Wyld, Jetty — most of the big companies in California are our clients. If we were producing the bulk extracts and had a bunch of our own brands to push into stores, maybe the retail piece would've made more sense. But your point is exactly right — this allows us to specialize, and it allows Glass House to specialize too, because Glass House wants to sell more Glass House product, and one way to do that is to have it in your own stores. It gives them more shelf space — they have ten stores and a whole department focused on retail, so they can take that over and do a great job for us. For your listeners, an MSA is a managed services agreement. In this case, Glass House manages the store day-to-day and receives a fee for the service they're providing. But the profitability and all the economics still flow back to us. So the idea is: let Glass House do their thing, we pay them a fee for it, and we feel that fee is value-added — we'll get more revenue and more profit back from the store, net of that fee, than we would running it ourselves. I think this was a win-win — Glass House is great at retail, it's their focus, and they want to do more of it. We just had the one store; it wasn't a big focus for us. So why not turn it over to an expert and focus on what we're really good at, which is bulk extraction and cultivation. Kellan Finney: How does a deal like that get started? What's the initial catalyst — does Leef approach Glass House, or how does something like that even get going from a conversational perspective? Jesse Redmond: Yeah, so this one actually predated me — it was kind of a warm conversation already happening when I joined the firm. The catalyst was that Glass House identified we had this great retail store in Palm Springs and Palm Desert specifically, and they were looking to build out their network of stores in a capital-efficient way to get shelf space. Rather than going out and buying a bunch of stores, they were interested in doing these managed services agreements, where they get a fee for operating the store and can also sell more Glass House product in it. There were some initial conversations before I formally joined Leef, and once I joined, I already had a good relationship with Glass House from a number of years — Graham Farrar lives in Santa Barbara, where I live, and the greenhouse is only about an hour from me. I've gotten to know Kyle and other members of the team as well over the last few years. So it was an easy one for me to step in and help move along — not easy in terms of the work, it was a heck of a lot of work, but easy in the sense that I had the relationship beforehand to help push it forward. Bryan Fields: I think deals like this are the direction the industry needs to go — instead of the old approach of growing as fast as you can and bolting on a bunch of assets, this is two strong companies going back to their core and saying, 'This is what we do best, and here's how we can align through a partnership where both sides benefit and strengthen the whole supply chain.' This is the type of deal I hope more companies pursue, because it makes so much sense — you see it and think, 'Finally, an understanding of, we have this, you have this, let's make a deal.' Jesse Redmond: Yeah, absolutely. Let's dive into the second piece of this, because the MSA part was interesting to us, but what really made this deal compelling was the off-take agreement, or supply chain agreement. We're an extraction company constantly sourcing from farms — we source from two hundred to three hundred farms across California, always looking for high-quality material for extraction. Glass House has about five-and-a-half million square feet of greenhouses — I think they're running a little over three million square feet right now — putting out a ton of finished flower, and they also have a ton of trim material for extraction. So we said, why don't we do the store MSA — that sounds fantastic — but also get a consistent supply of material for extraction from you, which gives us extra material to run and takes the pressure off constantly sourcing from those two to three hundred farms. Procurement is a full-time job — we have a whole department at Leef focused on it, finding material for extraction. So the MSA piece is key, but the cherry on top was the ability to get a consistent supply of Glass House material on a monthly basis. They produce great flower, which leads to great material for extracts. That's the piece I'm probably most excited about — that supply chain agreement for Glass House material on a monthly basis. It makes sense for them too, because they're producing more flower than ever, which leads to more trim for extraction than ever, and us being a consistent buyer of that trim makes their job easier as well. So I'd see it as a win-win on the dispensary side, and a win-win on the off-take side — we get the material we need for extraction, which lets us produce more oil, and Glass House gets a consistent consumer of their material. Kellan Finney: I think from a macro perspective it's almost like a change of the times — unifying and strengthening instead of fragmentation. It's the whole industry maturing to provide stability across the supply chain. Jesse Redmond: Yeah, I think that's a good way to look at it. We're complementary businesses — there's a little competitive overlap, but at the end of the day there's plenty of room for us both to win. Glass House is a big bulk producer of flower in California, with a great call option on interstate commerce given the size of their greenhouse — shipping across the U.S. is definitely part of their thesis, and similarly part of ours. We have a sungrown farm — the entitlement is 187 acres, which is 8.4 million square feet, so that gives you a sense of how big it can get. We're doing sixty-five acres this year, a little over three million square feet of cultivation. But we're focused on extracts, whereas Glass House focuses on flower — similar thesis, but they're selling finished flower and we're focused on extract production. So fairly complementary businesses, and I don't see us really cannibalizing each other. I totally agree with your point, Kellan — we need more companies working together. It's a cliché to talk about being stronger together, but I think that's more important than ever in cannabis: how do we get deals done where companies can truly help each other? Because if we're being honest, we all need some help right now. Bryan Fields: Right — and going back to what you said, Kellan, the stability aspect is so important, because people don't always realize how challenging procurement is, and how critical it is — if there's no material coming in, even the best processors can't process nothing. You need good material, and quality is so valuable there. And from Glass House's side, having a large customer like Leef means they can feel comfortable expanding their production and growing more, bringing down their cost of materials because they've got a large-scale buyer. So everything strengthens — the supply chain strengthens, and customers get better products at lower cost. Kellan Finney: And there's resource reallocation too — how much energy is being poured into both sides just trying to find each other. Glass House has a lot of material, but they've got to move that material, so they've got people trying to sell it. It helps in a bunch of different logistical ways too. Jesse Redmond: Yeah, I think that's totally true. We have a procurement department; they have a whole department focused on sales, so you're absolutely right — having a fixed buyer helps Glass House too. There's another nuance that might be interesting: we talk about California often having an oversupply of flower, but California actually has an undersupply of extraction material, which initially doesn't sound like it makes sense. But the reason is that whatever passes at the flower level for pesticides gets concentrated when you extract it — and we're not just concentrating THC or terpenes, we're concentrating everything, including the pesticides. So many times a batch that passes as flower won't pass once it's concentrated into an extract. It's important for us to have not just a large supply of material, but a large supply of clean material — you can have something that's grown really well and passes at the flower level, but then fails once concentrated, and then you're returning product, which turns into a whole headache. So it's been more challenging than I initially understood before I got into this role — not just having a lot of material, but having a lot of clean material. Bryan Fields: The cost of going through that entire process, testing it, and then realizing you've got a problem — that's a nightmare. And the end customer has no idea why the expenses are so high, when it's really these compounding problems, and it gets even more intricate when you have to go back and figure out where it actually came from. If it's environmental drift, now you've got even wider problems, because now you can't buy material from over there, and it just layers onto the challenges the whole industry faces. Jesse Redmond: Right, and usually it is drift, Bryan. When people hear about pesticides, they might think farms themselves are doing something wrong, but often it's from somebody spraying blueberries down the road. I don't think people are necessarily trying to put pesticides into things, but there's a lot of drift, especially in California. Kellan Finney: And it's tricky, because they move the goalposts — the rules change every two or three years for the cannabis industry in California, adding different pesticide thresholds, which makes it even harder to do the track-and-trace side of things. It's a super sensitive subject for a lot of California operators. Bryan Fields: Jesse, how long does a conversation between Leef and Glass House take, start to finish — I know it predated you, but is it six weeks, six months? How long would something like that take? Jesse Redmond: We closed in the middle of this month, so I'd say four or five months, somewhere in that range. We initially arrived at a term sheet, and then negotiating the actual MSA agreements took another month or six weeks after that, just because there are so many details to nail down in these contracts. So overall, conservatively, maybe a four-month process — but it could stretch a bit longer than that. Bryan Fields: Are there other conversations with other partners you think Leef could explore, if you can share that? And separately, are there similar kinds of partnerships you think other companies out there should consider? Jesse Redmond: Two good questions. Nothing specific we're looking at for Leef in the near term — we have our hands full with our initiatives this year: the farm, New York, advances in extraction technology, and now the Glass House deal — and we're looking to put more Bitcoin on our balance sheet. So we're not out looking for new projects right now. Longer term, we're entering New York this year, which takes us from a single-state operator to a multi-state operator, and I think we'd like to enter a new state every year or two after that. Or maybe there's a world where there's another MSO, or another operator that's great at cultivation or retail but needs help with extraction, and there could be some sort of deal there. Emily Paxia often says cannabis in California is like training for a marathon at altitude, and I think that's very true — so I think there's a world where we could take the SOPs and best practices we've learned competing in California, making some of the best extracts in the state, and bring that same knowledge and skill set to other states. We're doing that with New York; New Jersey is next door, Illinois is a healthy market, Florida could be interesting down the road. So expanding nationally is definitely on our radar, and strategic partnerships are of interest if somebody is an MSO, or has the cultivation and retail piece, and we could help them with extraction. Nothing explicit right now, but we're always mindful of where opportunities could come up. Bryan Fields: The extraction side — I'll keep saying this — people don't understand how nuanced, complicated, and challenging it is to do successfully, let alone continually successfully. It's really impressive that your team can do this, and that's a genuine competitive edge — when you go to other states and go toe-to-toe using the same material, there are going to be significant differences. I give your team a ton of credit for that. And the best benefit of going to a state like New York is that a lot of your brand partners are already there, and they're saying, 'Hey, we could really use our trusted supply chain partner here, because we're trying to make really consistent, great products — do you guys want to come?' Which makes the decision to go to New York a lot easier, because you're not entering new territory and having to find a bunch of new customers — a lot of your customers are already there. So it's really about extending an existing partnership. Jesse Redmond: Yeah, New York was a great fit for us. Our CEO, Michael, was on the show a few weeks ago and touched on this — New York is kind of the opposite of California, in that you have high prices and healthy margins. Extracts are used in fifty-two percent of products in New York, even more than California's roughly forty-eight percent — the pen market there is huge, the edible market is huge, the infused pre-roll market is huge. We liked all of those traits, and we decided to do this in a real capex-light manner — not go out and raise ten or fifteen million dollars to build some fifteen-thousand-square-foot extraction facility. Instead, we'd just upgraded our equipment in California, so we moved our still-great older equipment out to New York — we're using higher-capacity equipment here now — and it's sitting in a pod there waiting to be installed. We're going to lease a facility out there rather than buy something and spend a bunch of money. So we're entering New York in a real affordable, capex-light way that we can scale further down the road. And you're right that we also have brand partners out there — the ones killing it in California, your Kivas, your Wylds, your Jetties, your Mammoths — I don't know that all of them are in New York, but listeners get the idea that a lot of our biggest California brand partners are also out there, and they're saying, 'Hey, there's a shortage of great concentrates, we love your stuff, so as soon as you're set up, we'd love to start placing orders.' If we look back at some of the industry's mistakes, it was expanding too quickly and too widely at the same time, especially into states waiting to flip to adult use. That's part of what's sinking some operators — they expanded heavily into medical markets waiting for adult-use flips that didn't happen, and now they're sitting there with, say, Pennsylvania not at full capacity, waiting on Florida, who knows when that happens now. We've tried to learn from those mistakes: don't get too aggressive in a new market, go in a bit capex-light, go in knowing who you can sell to, have a great year one, and really start to scale in year two and year three. Ultimately we hope New York becomes as big, or bigger, for us than California. Bryan Fields: That's the perfect example of not being the first to market, but slingshotting through the second and third stages, so that all of a sudden you're at the top and people say, 'Wait, when did they even join?' We didn't even see them start. And you can say, well, it's because we took it slow, understood what we wanted to accomplish, made sure our customers were ready to go, and came in light and let it rip. So what other elements of that same strategic approach — being deliberate about the asset base — do you see Leef, or other companies, doing that you think isn't getting enough credit from an industry standpoint? Jesse Redmond: I think there are limited options right now, Bryan — I could stall for thirty seconds trying to think of more, but where we are as an industry is struggling with growth. When we talked late last year, I went back and listened to the first half hour of that episode a day or two before today, to get ready, and I had to stop because I was cringing — we had so much optimism about how things were going to change. Last year we thought Florida was basically in the bag — I think eighty, ninety, maybe ninety-five percent of the people I knew thought Florida was going to happen. It didn't. Pennsylvania we keep hoping will happen — we thought it could start early this year at one point, then push to the middle of the year, now maybe next year. And on top of that, zero political progress — arguably even a step back with the delays in the ALJ hearings — and we don't really know what's going on with Schedule III right now. So the industry is struggling, and a lot of businesses feel stagnant. One of the big challenges is that the tier-one MSOs — your Curaleafs, Veranos, Trulieves, Crescos of the world — are largely expected to grow mid-single digits this year, and for some of them it might even be lower, flat to low-single-digit growth. In that environment, if you're trying to boost EBITDA and ultimately cash flow, and eventually net income, you have limited levers to pull. So more and more, companies are focusing on the G&A line, interest expense, and really on survival. That's why you haven't seen many creative deals — businesses feel a bit handcuffed, and a lot of companies don't like their valuation right now, so doing deals at a low valuation isn't always ideal. The core problem is that we're in low-growth mode broadly as an industry. If you have limited levers to pull for growth, one thing to talk about is companies moving into the hemp world — that's one opportunity. But until we get some of these states to flip — say Pennsylvania turns on early next year, to be conservative, since everything takes longer than expected — that's one lever that would help most of the larger MSOs. Minnesota doesn't really move the needle, and that keeps getting kicked back further and further — it was supposed to be spring of this year, now we're talking spring of '26. GTI and Vireo are positioned to benefit from that, but it's not a huge needle-mover for the MSOs broadly. So we're left looking at the Farm Bill and hemp, wondering whether they'll close that loophole, which could drive more revenue back to state-legal stores — that's another lever for growth. But across the whole industry, what I see is mid-single-digit growth broadly. If you look at businesses expected to grow ten, fifteen percent or more over the next couple of years, it's a pretty short list — you have to look for companies with bigger pieces turning on. We're one of those, because of the farm, New York, and our extraction technology advances — we have the potential to grow twenty or thirty percent over the next couple of years. Glass House is another example — they're turning on more greenhouses and look like they're dipping a toe into hemp and the THCA farm-bill-flower market. Grown Rogue is a third example — their core businesses are in Oregon and Michigan, and now they're moving into New Jersey and Illinois. Planet 13, through the VidaCann acquisition, is another, though that's a bit different since it's not purely organic growth. There are probably a couple of other names I'm missing out there too. But the point is, we're in a low-growth environment, and that's handcuffing people a bit. Where I'd look for creativity or forward-looking effort, I think most companies are focused on survival right now rather than creative growth — not because people don't realize they need growth, but because they genuinely don't know where to find it in this environment. Look at the people you've had on the show — Charlie Bachtell, Jason Wild, Boris Jordan — these are all really high-IQ, smart people, and if they knew how to find double-digit growth over the next couple of years, they'd do it. Sometimes cannabis looks like what Abner Kurtin from Ascend Wellness calls a stair-step growth pattern — flat for a while, then new states flip on, it goes up, flattens again, goes up again. Right now we're in one of those flat periods, where people are focused more on survival and cost-cutting than growth opportunities, which is tough broadly for an investor in MSOs or in cannabis generally. But I think the opportunity is that people are painting all of cannabis with one brush, saying everything's broken and nothing is growing and we're never going to get reform — when in reality, you have a basket of higher-growth companies where the baby is getting thrown out with the bathwater, and they have a real path to meaningful financial improvement. If we add some reform on top of that — say Schedule III gets done — I think we'll see some of these stocks double and triple over the next couple of years. But more than ever, you have to be selective. This is no longer a buy-the-basket market. It's a stock picker's market. Bryan Fields: You illustrated that perfectly, going all the way back to the optimism we had. I listened back to that too and thought we might have been a bit too optimistic, though it was hard not to be — you'd have said there was a very low likelihood we'd get smashed across all those fronts, but in all honesty, the board broke terribly for us and it didn't work out. But your final point about being selective, I think, goes back to specialization. I continue to believe companies are looking inward and asking, 'If nothing changes for the next five to ten years, what do we do better than anyone else? What can we compete head-to-head in, in one single category? What do we do better than everyone?' Some companies don't have that answer yet — they're still figuring out, 'maybe we can do this, maybe we can do that,' but none of it fits their core narrative. The companies like Leef, like Glass House, that say, 'This is what we do better than anyone else, and we're going to double and triple down on it' — that's how they're going to not just survive, but thrive, when the tide changes and we all move in a different direction. Jesse Redmond: Yeah — we're going to look back one day and say we were too conservative in interviews, but honestly, in almost every interview I've done over the past two or three years, I've been too optimistic, and I've tried to tone it down. In my heart, I'm a huge believer in the destination — I don't think the destination for cannabis has changed, I think the timeline to reach it has changed. We talked last episode about this notion that there's a fine line between being early and being wrong, and we're walking it. I don't think we were wrong about the destination — I think we get to Schedule III, I think we get SAFE Banking, I think we get federal legalization with interstate commerce, and I think we get to higher exchanges. Great podcast, by the way — don't forget to listen. But the opportunity changes depending on the timeline. If those things happen in three years, the stocks perform very differently than if they happen in ten years. And the reality is that political progress is almost impossible to predict. Think back to November or December of 2022 — do you remember when SAFE was supposedly going to be in the NDAA? Stocks were up fifty, sixty percent over a few weeks, and apparently it really was going to happen. I talked to someone who was at a political event who said they were there at the last minute when it got pulled out. That wasn't BS, but it shows how hard it is to predict these things. So I retired from political predictions in December of '22, and that's been a fantastic bet — my life is way less stressful, and I'm wrong a lot less. I think there will come a time when we look back and say, 'Wow, we were so down, so out.' Historically, I've been pretty good at reading contrarian signals — I started my investment career in '97, at Fisher Investments in San Francisco, right around when the tech bubble burst. I learned a lot from watching that bubble burst, and then from watching the pieces get put back together, with some companies surviving and becoming leaders, and new ones emerging. No one talks about Pets.com anymore, no one talks about Webvan anymore, even a big networking company called Cisco that was the darling back then — no one talks about them the same way now. Now it's your Nvidias, your Apples, your Googles, your Netflixes — I don't even think Netflix was really a thing back then. I think that analogy might play out in cannabis too. What's hard is that for things to turn around, we need two things to happen. First, we need political progress — everybody listening knows that. When and if we wake up one day and see some progress, momentum can switch pretty quickly, but as a company and an industry, we need to make it to that day. Second, that's not enough on its own — you need growth alongside it. Late last year, at Water Tower Research, I was having conversations with big mutual fund companies, small-cap growth funds, and they were interested in cannabis because they saw those two things coming: unlocking value from political catalysts, and growth on the horizon, especially from the Florida flip and hopefully Pennsylvania too. Those were the two things they liked, paired with terrible sentiment in an overlooked sector. Where we are now is we have the terrible sentiment — I've never seen worse sentiment in my investing career — and we're getting past the point of hate into apathy, which is really the opposite of love. If you look at engagement numbers — you guys do a podcast, I'm sure you're still putting up great numbers — but some of us in the podcast world have seen less interest over the last six months or so, just because the space has been so depressed. The sentiment contrarian indicators are all going off: how many analysts have left the space, not just me, but people like Owen Bennett, Scott Fortune, and on down the list — there's only a handful of analysts left, and that's a contrarian indicator. Being down ninety-five percent is a contrarian indicator. A three-plus-year bear market is a contrarian indicator. Valuations are a contrarian indicator. But those aren't enough on their own — we need to add growth and political progress on top. Once those come together, that's the recipe for the stocks to really start taking off. The reason it's hard right now is that, broadly speaking, we don't know when those pieces arrive. We don't know when political reform is coming, because it's proven so hard to predict and so hard to get done. And on the growth side, Florida needs a vote and that supermajority of sixty percent, which has proven very hard to get, and Pennsylvania is going through its own legislative process — and that's just two states, but it's what plays out in every state. I think the way out is pairing this horrible sentiment with the growth and political-reform components that pull us up. It's just a matter of getting there — and when we do, there's going to be a fantastic opportunity. But I have zero idea if that happens three months from now or eighteen months from now. Bryan Fields: I think that's perfectly illustrated, and sometimes when things are hardest, that's the opportunity point — this is the part where the next set of successful companies is being built. Maybe it's not obvious to everyone, but for some of us it's clear which companies are growing and investing in the infrastructure to take advantage of the next wave, and preparing to survive through the tumultuous times we're in. So Jesse, last question for you: what question do you wish more people asked you? Jesse Redmond: 'Where will we be in ten years?' — because I think most people's time horizon is far too short. Kellan, how old are you? Thirty-five. Okay, so you're thirty-five. If you think about how long you have to be an investor — sometimes people get this wrong, thinking, 'When I'm sixty, I'll switch to bonds and start getting income, because then I'll retire and sell all my stocks.' I think you're going to do great, Kellan — by the time you're sixty, you're going to look at your finances and say, 'I have money, and I want to pass some of that on. I want growth into my retirement years.' For most people, the time horizon is a lot longer than they think — you've got thirty years until retirement, and then, say you live to ninety-five, that's thirty more years to live off that income. And you've probably got a family you'll want to pass wealth on to, and your kids might live another hundred years. So you can build an easy case that your time horizon with your money is a hundred years or longer. When we look at cannabis, we're always focused on what's happening in the next three, six, twelve months. That goes back to that notion of the destination — it's important to talk about the next three, six, twelve months, especially if you're a company thinking about strategy, but if you're an investor, I really encourage a longer time horizon. The path is there: we need things like Schedule III, SAFE Banking, and eventually federal legalization, which gets us interstate commerce. Then we get to the real exchanges — Nasdaq, the New York Stock Exchange. That's the path to where we want these companies to be from a valuation perspective. And on the growth side, we currently have twenty-four adult-use states; eventually we'll have thirty-five, forty-five, and hopefully all fifty adult-use states someday. That's a ton of runway to unlock — and we're not even talking about the global piece yet, which is becoming increasingly important. So I still think there's a ton of opportunity in cannabis, and the best thing an investor can do isn't to put money in and close their eyes for ten, fifteen, twenty years — it's to be mindful of the companies you're investing in. Look for a strong balance sheet, look for companies with long-term growth opportunities, but do it with a mindset of what your actual time horizon is, and give this time to play out. I don't know that we check all the boxes — Schedule III, SAFE(R) Banking, higher exchanges, federal legalization — in the next three to five years, but if we look out five to ten years, I think we get there, and even within that three-to-five-year window we can check a lot of boxes and make a lot of progress. So to answer your question, Bryan — I wish people focused on a longer time horizon and thought about the opportunity, because this industry is still coming out of prohibition. It's super hard and awkward and clumsy right now, but that kind of makes sense, because we're coming off prohibition, and we're a threat to a lot of industries — tobacco, alcohol, pharmaceuticals — there's a lot of pressure trying to hold us down. But eventually we break through, get treated like everybody else, more of the shackles come off, new states turn on, and I think these businesses eventually thrive. So maybe the one thing I'd leave people with is: focus on your real time horizon, extend it, and look at companies with balance sheets to survive and growth opportunities to drive more revenue. Bryan Fields: I love it, I think that's perfect. And Kellan — think about your grandkids. Jesse, for our listeners, if they want to get in touch, learn more, or buy Leef stock, where can they find you? Jesse Redmond: You can buy Leef stock on your local OTC exchange or the CSE — ticker LEEF. I encourage you to check that out. Our website is leefbrands.com. If you want to connect with me, you can find me on socials at Jesse Redmond, or if you're still an email person, shoot me a note at jesse@leefbrands.com. And I do a podcast most weeks with my friend Morgan Paxia called Higher Exchanges. Last time we talked, we were still doing it in a Spaces format, live every Thursday at 1 p.m. Pacific on X, but we've since upgraded — partially inspired by you guys at The Dime — and now we're on video, so you can find us on YouTube under Higher Exchanges. We're still recording at 1 p.m. Pacific, live on X, LinkedIn, and YouTube, but now with video and proper microphones, which has been a huge boost. People seem to like it, and the production is much better. Please check out Higher Exchanges. Bryan Fields: Thanks for taking the time — this was a lot of fun. Jesse Redmond: I appreciate it, guys. Thanks for having me back for my second time. I'm going to book early so I can get a third time in before next year. Bryan Fields: Love it. Talk to you soon.