The Hard Thing About Hard Things: A Melody of Grit & Fortitude ft. Christina Betancourt Johnson

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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 Kellen Finney. This week we've got a very special guest, Christina Betancourt Johnson, CEO of Standard Wellness Maryland. Christina, thanks for taking the time. How are you doing today? Christina Betancourt Johnson: Awesome — midday, average Tuesday, doing great. Bryan Fields: Excited to have you here. Kellen, how are you doing? Kellen Finney: Doing really well, really excited to talk to Christina — I mean, excited to talk Maryland, I know it's near and dear to your heart. Doesn't seem like there's much West Coast representation here, but it should be a good East Coast conversation. You know what I mean, Bryan? Bryan Fields: I love it, Kel — and you didn't even try. DC — Christina was born there, loyalty through and through, and I think her father's from there too, so I've got nothing on that front. We'll quickly put it on the record: yes, let the record reflect, it's another East Coast win. So, Christina, we've got a little East Coast/West Coast battle going. If you had to choose a coast, which one are you taking? Christina Betancourt Johnson: Oh, man, I know — I like to be bi-coastal. I like the idea of pulling down the best of everything. On the West Coast you've got a more relaxed vibe — it's not quite as competitive or gritty as the East Coast, where we're fighting our way through the cold, and that shows up in everything we do, whether it's fighting our way through business or anything else. On the West Coast you also have beautiful oceans, great weather, different topography — rolling hills, and a little bit of everything within a few hours' drive. But on the East Coast, it's just the attitude. I grew up here, so I'm used to it, and I like the go-gettiness of the people around me. So there are positives to both coasts — I'd have to choose bi-coastal, which I'm not sure was an option, but that's what I'd choose. Bryan Fields: I think that's a very PC answer, and I think Kellen's ecstatic to know he went in thinking he had no chance and came away with a draw at best. So, Christina, for our listeners, can you give a quick background on yourself and how you found your way to the cannabis space? Christina Betancourt Johnson: Yeah, so I'm DC born and bred — grew up here, but I've lived in a few other places. I lived in Italy for a while, Sicily actually. I ran track, went to undergrad at Hampton, went to grad school in Texas, studied marketing and organizational development. I worked in the nonprofit sector, worked in the for-profit sector, was a developer for a long time, and was CEO of a national affordable housing organization. Out of nowhere, around 2015, I had a brain injury, and that spun me in a different direction. A lot happened during that time, but fast forward a couple of years and I had a much deeper understanding of my life's purpose — why I'm here and what I want to do. I landed on being here to be of love and to be of service. I was kind of living that way already, but then in 2017 an opportunity was presented to me around cannabis. I had no desire at the time to go into cannabis — it wasn't an industry I'd been tracking carefully. I went down a rabbit hole pursuing more information about the sector. I did a big speaker event for Glow, which is one of our brands, and then did another for Women Grow, and told the whole story there. But the long and short of it is I got challenged to go into the space. I took courses, looked at operators, traveled across America looking at existing operations — all in a relatively short amount of time. And I thought, there's a huge opportunity here, bombastic growth, and it's one of the few industries where you can just be a human — I won't even bring in the demographic piece — and transition as a CEO in one sector to CEO in another sector with limited experience in the actual product. If you're a CEO in healthcare, you can't jump in and be a CEO in oil and gas — it doesn't work that way. If you're a CEO in the car industry, you don't transition into pharmaceuticals; they want deep subject-matter expertise. Cannabis is different because it's so nascent — there's a much more welcoming environment for people with good skills who are hardworking and committed to the industry's values: openness, fairness, health, wellness, equity. So for me, layering in the demographics — as a woman, as a woman of color, and as an executive — I saw an opportunity to transition into this welcoming space and make something great. That's how I transitioned into the space. I popped in in 2017, pursued licensure in two states, and ended up winning. In Maryland, we got cultivation out of the gate — that got taken away, and we had to pursue it through a legal process. Then we picked up retail through a legislative process. And then, in another round of licensure about a year ago, we partnered with a processor and social equity applicant and picked up processing. So we're now vertical in Maryland, under Standard Wellness Maryland. We're really excited about that. Bryan Fields: What I loved about what you said is you considered the opportunity, ran the numbers with a pro forma, and thought, okay, check, check, check, this makes sense, here's a good opportunity to dive in. What was the first moment where you thought, "welcome to cannabis" — where everything you'd carefully prepared going in didn't actually play out the way you expected? Was there a specific moment? Christina Betancourt Johnson: The application process, absolutely. I'm a very values-based, integrity-based person — I believe in conscious capitalism, that we can do well by doing good. I was envisioning, okay, we're going to build this company, hopefully someday vertically integrated, dedicated to empowering individuals through the healing power of cannabis and all of this good stuff. Then I prepared for the application process in Maryland — this started back in 2017, and the actual application dropped and was submitted in 2019. It was the most rigorous, arduous, values-less thing — you weren't going in leading with your heart. That's what I had in mind, but this was numbers. Do you have past performance? Here are the metrics we're grading on. It was a grading system, a really rigorous application graded by the state. It took me back to my business approach in any other industry I'd worked in, where everything is graded and you have to answer the questions to score the highest grade. That was counterintuitive to what I philosophically wanted to build — a company about health, wellness, inclusivity, and the healing power of cannabis — and here I am taking a test. You know how it is when you're in class, Bryan — you went to school in Baltimore — you want to take the course so you're actually learning the material, digesting it, enjoying the coursework. That's what I'd envisioned for cannabis. But when you go to take the test, it's like, no, you're taking the test to get an A, because if you get an F, you might not stay in the program. So you have to prepare to get that A. That's the bottom line. That made very real for me the dichotomy in the cannabis sector — the goodwill and the intentional doing-the-right-thing, and also the politics, the quality assurance, the rigorous regulations, the compliance, the taxes — all the things we're graded on that are married to, or juxtaposed with, all the good we're doing for people by healing them with this plant. So I'd say the application process was like, what the— it was so different from what I'd been doing the previous year or two as I learned about the sector. That was my aha moment. Bryan Fields: I think that's so perfectly said, because people from the outside sometimes have this vision of how the cannabis industry operates, and exactly like you described — you went in with all these intentions, and on day one, submitting the application, you realized this is a balance, and you have to do both at the same time, because if you don't do one, you certainly can't do the other. Christina Betancourt Johnson: Yeah, absolutely. And I'd say if you don't do all of those things — the compliance, the quality assurance, brand management, every part of the business — and then times ten because it's cannabis — it's harder to manage your brand, harder to advertise, harder to market. If you don't do those exceptionally well, you're going to lose. And not lose a little — you're going to lose big, because in cannabis everything is a bet. You have to take more risk and invest more money than any normal retail or agriculture operation, but the loss is so much greater, and you have very little recourse — it's not like you can go to the Better Business Bureau. It's a nascent industry, so everything is completely new and different. You have to be exceptional at what I call "the others" — the foundation of any business. But in cannabis, there are these two polar-opposite aspects of running the business you have to master, and do well, to succeed. Kellen Finney: So you get the cultivation license, you go through that experience — at what point do you then realize you need retail and processing, that you want to become vertically integrated? How far along in the process was that? Christina Betancourt Johnson: When I submitted the application. The application round I was in was called the 2019 House Bill Two round. That was a result of a disparity study in the state that looked at how many women and ethnic minorities were owners in the 2014 and 2015 round — a reflective look at what the industry was and how it had evolved. As a result of that disparity study, legislation was passed — House Bill Two — calling for another round of licensing in two categories, cultivation and processing. Four cultivators and about 15 processors came out of that round. In that round you had to have certain qualifications — it was actually race-based, income-based, all these requirements to qualify as a business owner, and they were difficult to comply with. But I knew early on I wanted to own the vertical — there was no question in my mind about the benefits. So I knew that when I first applied, even though I couldn't get retail yet. You know you want to go vertical because from an economic standpoint, that'll help— Kellen Finney: —the supply chain, make sure you can hit your numbers. But coming from outside the industry, you have to find experts you can rely on to help grow the plant under the rules and regulations. And then processing — can you dive into that? Is that extraction specifically? Take us through who your first hires were and how critical they were to getting off the ground correctly. Christina Betancourt Johnson: Yeah, so let me tell you, from my vantage point, why I wanted to be vertically integrated. I think the first thing, as you said, was control over the supply chain. We knew that by owning cultivation, processing, and retail, we'd ensure consistency in the product, in product quality, in pricing, and in availability. It really minimized disruptions caused by third-party suppliers. Coming into a market that's kind of mature, with operators already up and running, I knew it would be very difficult if I were hyper-dependent on another operator for what I needed. As a newcomer, I wanted to control my margins too, and make sure I wasn't getting the shittiest product they had. I wanted good flower — even if it wasn't top-of-the-line, I wanted to make sure it was high quality going into processing, because it's shit in, shit out — you get gold in, gold out. So I was careful about control of the supply chain, but better margins and profitability were important too. Brand consistency, managing the customer journey, customer loyalty — those things mattered. Market adaptability, being able to adjust so you have a competitive advantage in real time — paying attention to market trends and pricing has proven really important on the retail side for us. And from a regulatory and compliance standpoint, I thought vertical integration would give us better oversight of compliance and regulatory adherence — it reduces risk. So I started with an idea around innovation and new products, but R&D costs a lot at any company, and in cannabis there isn't as much spent on R&D, because you don't have the big universities to rely on for the scientific background as a starting point, and we don't have the big margins to say, "we'll give 20% to marketing and dump the rest into R&D." Our margins are razor-thin because of 280E and our tax burden. Early in the application process, I realized that to look good on paper you had to have certain people stacked on your team. Luckily, because I'd been in the nonprofit sector, the for-profit sector, and had worked with government, I had a vast array of resources at my disposal, and those people proved invaluable — I was asking a ton of questions and put together a really strong team just for the application. We didn't get licensed for another five years, but over that time we identified people who'd come in at various points to help set up the business — HR, regulatory compliance, whatever it was. We're still operationalizing the business, honestly — we're still in the early stages. My first hire was my HR and people-operations person, who had also been leading retail operations at Cookies for a while, so I got the benefit of a twofer. We were able to strategically approach operationalizing the business with good people, putting people first, because that's what I care about. Then, going to market — the lowest barrier to entry is probably retail, because of the cost and investment, so that was the route we explored. We also knew that to get funding for cultivation, especially with a lender, they wanted to see past performance. Having retail operational meant we had EBITDA, we had cash flow they could look at, and it gave us better terms. So it was a strategy that she helped me with, along with our advisors. I also had an operational partner — Standard Wellness was already up and running in other states, so they were a sounding board too. But most of the work was in-house. Kellen Finney: What was tangibly the hardest part of the vertical integration? We've talked about all the benefits — what was, or still is, the most challenging part of making it functional? Christina Betancourt Johnson: So, year one, we lost a lot of money. We weren't even operational — no income coming in. The challenge was that the state mandated we be operational by a certain date, and we had a 12-month window. For everybody in our class — the four cultivators — it got extended, but we still had to be operational by the end of 2024. We didn't get licensed until spring of 2022; we had to wait for the adult-use round, because I knew in that round there'd be a whole new set of licensees, and I couldn't forecast the market without knowing how many new licenses were coming online. So I couldn't raise capital — we were sidelined for about 18 months, unable to raise. And then all of a sudden it's "go," and now we've got adult use and have to be operational within 18 months. We had three real estate deals go bad — well, they were good deals that went bad. We lost money on deposits, we lost money on attorneys negotiating — we're talking several hundred thousand dollars. These attorneys aren't billing like trash collectors; they're picking up all our money and putting it in garbage bags. I'd say the biggest challenge was coming up with a solution to meet the needs of all our stakeholders. What I mean by that, Kellan, is: we had regulators who wanted to know our timeline, how we'd operationalize, and we had to hit a deadline. We had investors asking what the plan was, and sometimes those two plans are a little different. We couldn't fundraise fast enough, but the state gave us a significant amount of money in grants to operationalize — and we had to answer to them too. We had lawmakers we'd been working with who wanted to see results, because we were one of four. And then you have the general public whose appetite we'd been whetting. So you have all these stakeholders you're trying to service. Just getting through year one to get our two licenses — we literally got one of them on December 31st, 2024. If we hadn't met our cutoff deadline for cultivation, we wouldn't have a license today. So we ended up operationalizing in pods, Kellan, instead of doing one big grow. I had big plans — 50,000 square feet, 100,000 square feet — I thought we'd have all this canopy and do what everybody else did. No, we did not. We set up what felt like a trailer in a trailer park just to get operational and secure the license, so we could then start growing in a larger facility. Sometimes people talk about the regulatory piece and the compliance piece all the time, but if you're not in the space, you don't really know what that means concretely. What it meant for us was: if we hadn't bought those trailers — which I got from another operator in West Virginia, because I knew their investor who was trying to get rid of them, and I happened to have that conversation because I sat on a board with them, and then we had a follow-up conversation at an event where we were on a panel together — if you don't build up relationships over time and do the work before you're operational, it's very hard to navigate this space. You're hearing information on panels, at conferences, building relationships, talking to people — those are the things that feed you when you need it. You don't know when you'll need the information, but if I hadn't heard nine months earlier that they were trying to get rid of those trailers, I wouldn't have been able to get them. So the hardest part was managing the requirements of all our stakeholders — some compliance, some financial, some regulatory. And also being a bit of a public figure — people recognize my face in a few places now, so you have to be careful about your messaging and how you present yourself. It's a tough balance, a very difficult balance — near impossible, really, because cannabis doesn't grow instantaneously, as wonderful as that would be. You need the infrastructure in place, the personnel in place, the resources in place. Bryan Fields: I'm sure that pro forma, again, had this grand concept of, "all right, when we rip off the wrapper, this is how it's going to go" — but instead you do a sixteenth of it, and you also want to hit end product and do extraction, so how do you divvy this up, and then how do you hit your numbers so it still makes sense? Is that the ultimate balance, exactly like you said? Christina Betancourt Johnson: It is. I'd say it's like an incredible melody of vision, actualizing things, and failure. It's this crazy melody of all these things happening constantly, and you have to have an incredible degree of grit and fortitude, but also a lot of grace. You learn pretty quickly — especially since I'm not a big cannabis user myself — you've got to mellow out, give other people room, give yourself room. You have to thrive in the gray area; you can't live in black and white. I'm very much a black-and-white person by nature — I see something and think, "this is the way it's supposed to be, we're marching in this direction, here are my 475 plans, does everybody have a handle on them?" You have to throw all of that up in the air like confetti, sit back, and figure it out day by day. That's the adjustment in cannabis, and it's hard to understand until you're in it — it's almost like marriage. You see other people doing it, but you have no idea what's happening behind closed doors. People smile, you see the photos on Instagram, the podcasts and series — none of it compares to what actually happens once you're in the house with the person you're "married" to. It's the same in cannabis — we see the brands, they look beautiful, these Photoshopped pictures of plants, people write glowing reviews. You see maybe 10 to 20 people talking about cannabis who are CEOs, because those are the same people who keep getting tapped for the smaller venues and podcasts, and then you hear from other folks about the challenges, but you don't really know what it feels like because you're not married to it yet. Once you are, it's like, "oh my God, the ring is burning my finger." Same in cannabis. You've got to be resilient, you've got to have grit. There's a quote — I don't remember exactly how it goes — but it's something like, it's the last 20% of an effort that makes the most difference, and that's where you have to give 120%, because the people who don't push past the first 80 — which is heavy and hard — that last 20% is where you have to go harder than everybody else. That's the differentiator between companies that succeed and companies that don't. The ones going full speed in that last 20% saw things differently, listened more carefully, gave themselves grace along the way so they could keep going — they massaged their muscles out while they kept running the track. That's something you don't fully appreciate until you're in the space. It is absolutely wild. I'm on the board of the U.S. Cannabis Council — it's an incredible lobbying and advocacy group. We hear something new every month; we've got weekly meetings, but from meeting to meeting there's always new things coming up. We had hemp, which came out of nowhere a few years ago as a real challenge. You had the farm bill, then some iterations of it — you've got people driving a Mack truck through the farm bill, you've got challenges at a state level where cannabis is really flourishing, and then you've got hemp competitors moving intoxicating products, and you're like, well, what do I do? You have to pivot, be innovative, and figure out other ways to survive. Cannabis as an industry is truly a bizarre thing. Bryan Fields: It's really unique, and one of the things that makes it even more challenging is that all the states are completely different. Give us a sense of the states you operate in and some of the fun differences between them. Christina Betancourt Johnson: Well, we won in New York, and we actually won originally in DC — we couldn't get placarded and a few things fell through, so we dropped the DC license. But we went in New York and got retail. We partnered with a justice-involved individual — that's how they characterized their social equity program. I think the program was very well-intentioned — like a lot of things in cannabis, well-intentioned but poorly rolled out or operationalized. What the governor and the former head of the agency intended was a really nice idea, but a few things were missing. You have justice-involved individuals — people who've been charged with offenses, maybe gone to jail, real human beings — and if you've done time, there's one thing that, unilaterally, most people who've done time don't have: trust. They don't trust the system, they don't trust authority, they don't trust their partners. So when you've got an entire program built around people who fundamentally don't trust — for valid reasons, because they've been unfairly targeted by a political system that hung its hat on the war on drugs, targeting certain types of people around marijuana — you've got an undercurrent of a problem, and it's not a small one, it's a riptide. So you had all these justice-involved individuals partnering with whomever, and there's a lack of trust that doesn't happen on a regulator's timeline. Regulators say, "you've got to get operational, you've got to do all these things," but those justice-involved individuals are essentially saying, without saying it, "that's your timeline, not ours — we've got to learn who these partners are, we've got to learn a whole new industry, we've got to learn how to run a legitimate business." It's totally different from Maryland in a lot of ways, because Maryland didn't have that justice-involved-individual requirement. Legislation can be well-intended — the intent of the law is there — but standing it up is a totally different story. So the justice-involved-individual piece, from New York to Maryland, was totally different. Our new regulator in Maryland is actually from New York — I'm excited about her, I think she's really smart and sharp, and I look forward to seeing how she applies her New York experience to the Maryland market. I think failure is one of the best teachers. In Maryland we have a very tightly regulated market, and our legislators and regulators are extremely sensitive to the challenges presented by intoxicating hemp that isn't tested or regulated. They're extremely sensitive to consumer safety, and from the ground up — from local elected officials all the way to the governor, who was close to cannabis having sat on GTI's board — we have a really informed legislative body; actually, all three branches are pretty informed here, and consumer safety is at the forefront. In New York, I think equity was the hot topic at the forefront. You had all these pop-ups — we all saw it happening, people buying out of trailers in Times Square, basically the cannabis equivalent of food trucks everywhere, landlords renting out 200-, 300-square-foot spaces just to push product that had come in from California. That's not happening quite the same way in Maryland. There were a lot of differences, but probably a lot of similarities too — the programs were well-intended, legislators had good intentions, they wanted to diversify the sector and build something sustainable. It's just that rolling it out can be a bit of a bear. Bryan Fields: I think that's really well said, because it's so difficult to manage all these moving pieces simultaneously while holding the goal in mind — but you recognized, exactly like you did, Christina, when you got started, that this is how it looks on paper, but in practice and in actuality, it's not how it's actually going to work. Christina Betancourt Johnson: Yeah, and it's important for leaders — whether you're an elected official, an entrepreneur, or whoever you are — to be iterative and comfortable adjusting as you go. The iterative nature of cannabis touches everything, from regulations being super dynamic, to the evolution in plant understanding, education, and technology, to the different types of people coming into the space. You really have to be agile in this space, and honestly that's true for leaders across the board. Kellen Finney: And I think that through iteration we'll see — they may not be massive 20% gains right off the bat, but we'll start to see tiny incremental changes. For instance, I was just in Brooklyn this weekend, and there wasn't a bodega in sight. My buddy who lives there said all the bodegas randomly went out of business — they were just closed — and now he has to go to a legal store that's actually licensed. So there are incremental changes, and I don't know if that's permanent — right now it's just March 2025, we'll see. Hopefully cannabis continues to make these incremental changes. And what are some of the things you'd like to see in the Maryland market specifically? Christina Betancourt Johnson: Oh boy, you'll put me in the hot seat, Kellen — I'm in the middle of General Assembly session, I won't tell anyone. There's legislation before the General Assembly right now related to consumption lounges that's one of the areas we're going to have to address immediately. There's an equity issue with how people can consume safely, especially for people in rental properties, or any subsidized buildings or buildings with loans on them — you can't consume on those properties, and a lot of people don't understand that. So there's an equity concern and an access concern, but also a safety concern. There are already a lot of businesses hosting pop-up events where people can consume in community, and cannabis is absolutely a community-based substance — usage is very community-based. So Maryland's going to have to tackle that. The bill we have right now is basura — trash, I'd say. I'm not a legislator, I'm not the one drafting it, it didn't come out of my shop, but I think it's a good start — you have to start somewhere. A lot of people criticized the bill when it came out; I came out publicly and said I was glad about it, and people were pissed — "I can't believe she supports it." Look, I don't support everything in the bill, but we've got to lead with grace — this stuff is iterative, it's a start, and at least they proposed a bill on the matter. It needs to be addressed, and we need to work to get there. One thing I'll say, Kellan, is I'd like to see more people involved in the legislative process — not just in Maryland but across the US. Right now it belongs to a small few. I don't think people fully appreciate or understand how to activate in that space, how to build relationships before they have an ask, how to respect legislators and understand that they're not subject-matter experts — they really aren't. They're elected by the people to learn about 300 different topics and vote on things that affect how those topics play out in real life. That's a crazy thing — we have committees that specialize in things, but they still aren't experts; they don't necessarily work in the fields they're evaluating. I think we need poli-sci boot camps in cannabis, so people understand political science and how it works effectively, how it can work in their favor. If I could change one thing across the nation, it would be how people understand the political process and how they activate within it effectively. Bryan Fields: You think that would be an educational approach? How could that work? That's a very interesting topic given what we see in the political world today — people are very divisive, and it's a hot topic for most. How would that work best? Christina Betancourt Johnson: I'm not sure — I don't know, Bryan, because I can tell you who doesn't want people to learn that. I don't think regulators want the masses to understand how regulatory and legislative affairs work, necessarily, because that makes them a lot more powerful — it makes the masses powerful. I don't know that legislators want everybody to understand it either, because then you have a lot more people approaching them, trying to educate them, direct them, motivate them, or influence them — I don't think they want that. But in terms of having proper representation and a say, people have to understand the process, and they need to be professional about it. I think we have a dearth of understanding — I'm speaking broadly, there are a lot of people who get it, but a lot more who don't. That's how you end up with lopsided legislation. People get upset when it's enacted, but they don't feel it until a year later, and then they're like, "whoa, what happened, I feel like I got hit by a tornado." Well, the tornado started forming two years ago, ma'am. I think that's an interesting thing — one of those things I had the benefit of coming into the sector with a little information and knowledge on, that I see a lot of people not having. Kellen Finney: No, it's really interesting. As I'm thinking about it, I'm picturing a lot of people who just like to complain, like, "hey, it's always the same people arguing with legislators." Well, that's not how it has to work — you can spend your time doing that if you want change. At the end of the day, legislators work for you — you position yourself in front of them to make the change, and it requires every single person to do a little bit. And I also think it doesn't have to be at the state level — we don't have to talk about regulatory compliance and changes only there. At the local level, you can get involved in how permitting is done. We're in Baltimore — hate to throw Baltimore under the bus here, but I think there are some areas of opportunity there. We should have really clear instructions for everybody coming into the sector: here are the things you need to consider when pursuing licensure, here's what you need to consider across the 50-or-so local jurisdictions, here in terms of permitting are the things you'll need at the ready, and here, in each jurisdiction, are the different types of people you'll interact with — because some people haven't gone through a real estate process before, they don't know it. All they know is running a business, maybe, or nothing. But you can go to your local officials, get some of that information, talk to your city council members, and say, "hey, the permitting process is bad, let's change this," or "we have ideas about how to change this," and you can make those changes happen. A lot of people just don't know how to do that. I'd also say collaboration is a big thing — we have a lot of smaller advocacy groups that don't work with the larger advocacy groups, and if they combined, they could be a lot more powerful; these smaller affinity groups could have more of a say if they combined their power. I'd love to see that too. Kind of boring stuff — your listeners are probably like, "don't want to hear about this," but— Christina Betancourt Johnson: I do think that's really important. If you're a cannabis nerd, politics probably isn't super interesting, but it's actually the whole infrastructure of the industry — without politics, you don't have an industry. I also think there's an intrinsic value in a deeper understanding of poli-sci. Kellen Finney: Yeah, there's this whole avenue you just explained where you can go talk to regulators, but there's also the avenue where you're talking to your friends — you're maybe trying to have agency over your own life, starting a business, understanding these fundamentals of regulations and county laws. Instead of it being something unknown that you're scared of, so you don't do it, and then you judge it — now it's like "the deep state is against you" or something like that. Realistically, it's like: just get educated, get involved, and then it's all clear, and there's a roadmap to get to the goal. It's just scary because you didn't see all the steps along the way. So I do think there's a huge value in that. And in cannabis especially, having conversations at the regional level leads to movements at the state level, which then leads to movements at the federal level. Right now everyone complains that we haven't gotten movement at the federal level — well, it's because there clearly wasn't enough movement at the regional levels, because there's still massive opposition at the federal level. There wasn't enough momentum built going from regional to state and then trying to get through federal. So I think there's still a tremendous value in that person-to-person, deeper understanding of the political landscape. You know what I mean? Christina Betancourt Johnson: I totally agree with that. Totally agree. Kellen Finney: That's my little soapbox — thanks for letting me hop on it. Bryan Fields: We appreciate your soapbox, Kellen. Thank you. Thanks for bringing the soapbox into the conversation. So, Christina, one year from now, what's changed? Christina Betancourt Johnson: Well, I'm sure I'm going to have more gray hair — you can see it coming in. I've gotten all of this in the last five years; I used to have beautiful brown hair, now it's all gray. What's the girl's name — not the Avengers, X-Men, the one with the streak of silver? Bryan Fields: Storm's all silver, but there's that other one who goes a little crazy — I can't think of her name, but she has that streak. Christina Betancourt Johnson: Rogue? Bryan Fields: Rogue, yeah. Christina Betancourt Johnson: Yeah, crazy power. Well, maybe I'll have that in a year — I'll add some more grays to the hair. I think in a year, at the local level, I hope to have some of the social equity licensees that were licensed last year operational. I think we'll have a consumption bill that's moved, so we'll have some events that are legal and regulated. And I think we'll see some movement in sale of operators in the next 12 to 24 months. I do think that while we won't be legalized, we'll get some federal relief in the form of rescheduling — I believe that will happen in 2025. With rescheduling, we'll potentially get some relief on taxes; it should be automatic, but with this administration, you never know — there have been a lot of curveballs and wild executive orders coming out of the White House lately, so I'm not sure exactly what that will look like, but we'll have a circus to contend with when it comes to rescheduling. I think, because of that, we'll also see a lot of movement and consolidation — the M&A we saw a couple of years ago, I think we'll see a flurry of that again. I think we'll have more brands popping up — I love the idea of this brand proliferation, and if brands are culture-forward and customer-forward, I think we're going to see some pretty incredible stuff in the market. I also think that with rescheduling you'll see a different degree of research and development — we won't see it fully actualized in the next year, but I think it will happen. I'd love to see the US market work more closely with other countries on research. What Israel has done is incredible, and they've been doing it for decades — I don't know why we haven't been able to tap into that more. I don't have the bandwidth to go across the country, I can barely manage the bi-coastal thing we were talking about, but I wish we could tap into our friends and partners in other countries. I know the University of Oregon had an incredible program working across similar latitudinal lines with other nations that could grow cannabis in that ideal geography and topography. I think there are probably a lot of partners, from Israel to Pakistan to China, that we could work with. I don't know that I'll see it, but I'd like to see that in the next year. I'd also like to see wellness come out more — I think if we get rescheduled, there will be a lot of interest from insurance companies and other pharmaceutical brands in what we're doing. I don't know exactly what that means, but I think there will be interest from those entities, and we'll have to pay attention and figure out what it means for us. That's all I've got — I'm no mind reader, no magician, I can't look into a crystal ball, but that's what I'm feeling from my peers and observing. Bryan Fields: I love it. Last question — what question do you wish more people asked you? Christina Betancourt Johnson: What question do I wish more people asked me — that's a good one. I encounter a lot of entrepreneurs, and I wish people asked me: if I could go back and do it all over again, what would I do differently? Because there are a lot of lessons in failure, and people want to hear, "what are you doing now, what's so great," but if people asked, "hey, where did you screw up," I've got a list for them, and I think that would help people avoid traps. If I had to go back and do it all over again, I might still be in plant-touching, but I might actually be in an ancillary business instead. My background was in marketing and org development — there's a lot of interesting stuff on the marketing side. I've enjoyed lobbying too. But I definitely think there's value in sharing the mistakes and the follies, and I think a lot of people don't ask about that. It's not something you think to ask a CEO — "hey, where did you screw up most" — but reframing it as "what would you do differently or better," I think we'd all be happy to share that with people as they're starting out or building. There's a lot of value in the answer. Bryan Fields: Is there one particular thing that comes to mind you could quickly share? Christina Betancourt Johnson: Yeah, I think — I've been accused of sometimes being a type-A personality and doing a lot on my own. Early on I felt very alone when I first got started, and I thought I had to do a lot on my own and figure it out myself. I think that might have been manufactured, and it was a bit of a mistake, because it was my first foray into the space and I was afraid — I knew I could manage it and be responsible for it, but I think there would have been more agility and a faster pace to market if I'd engaged more with others in a trust-forward way. I think I engaged with people and got what I needed, but I was so afraid of trusting fully and being vulnerable that I wasn't able to hand things off and say "go." Sometimes you move faster when you can do that and redirect. So that's what I'd say my failure was — thinking I had to do everything myself. I don't know that it was ego; I think it was more fear. Bryan Fields: Great answer, I really do — especially given all the challenges in this space, I think that's a really full, honest answer. For our listeners who want to get in touch and learn more, where can they find you? Christina Betancourt Johnson: Yeah, you can definitely find us on Instagram — on any given day we're there, though we might get flagged because Meta likes to do that. We're at The Forest Baltimore. You can also go to standardwellness.com to get to our dispensary. You can also find me personally on Instagram at cannacris underscore — C-A-N-N-A-C-H-R-I-S, underscore. So you can get to the dispensary through Instagram, Google us, find me on Instagram or LinkedIn, and our operating entity, Standard Wellness Maryland, at standardwellness.com. Bryan Fields: We'll link it all up in the show notes. Thanks for taking the time — this was a lot of fun. Christina Betancourt Johnson: Thank you for your time, guys.