The Michelin-Star Experience? Gibran Washington on What Customers Actually Want

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Bryan Fields: What’s up, guys? Welcome back to another episode of The Dime. I’m Bryan, Phil is with me as always, this is Kellan Finney, and this week we’ve got a very special guest, Gibran Washington, CEO of Ethos Cannabis. Gibran, thanks for taking the time. How are you doing today? Gibran Washington: Doing great, guys. Appreciate having me on here with you today. Bryan Fields: Excited to chop it up. Kellan, how are you doing? Kellan Finney: Doing well, thrilled to talk to you, Bryan. I’m really excited to talk to East Coast cannabis — I’m not even going to try to hide it. East Coast all the way; I’ll just represent the West Coast out here. How are you, Bryan? Bryan Fields: I love it. Yeah, we’ll get to Bryan quickly on the record from the New York standpoint — I think it’s great to have another one out here, I’m excited. And I think what’s more important is the medicinal side. We’re talking about cannabis, and as I was sharing before, sometimes that gets overlooked, forgotten, or not prioritized enough given its importance. I love some of the work Gibran’s doing. So quickly, before we get into it — East Coast, West Coast, hip-hop or something — a map of your loyalty. Where do you put it? Gibran Washington: I mean, for music, for cannabis, for athletics — if we’re talking about cannabis, if it’s grown in a basement and not in the regulatory system, I believe East Coast cannabis can hold its own. On the West Coast, in the regulated market, they allow 100,000 CFUs and let growers go 12 to 16 weeks, so their crops tend to be a little more pungent. But I’ll take a basement grow on the East Coast over a basement grow on the West Coast any day of the week. Bryan Fields: That was a very PC answer, but also very nicely laid out. So for all the listeners, can you give a quick background on yourself and how you found your way to the cannabis space? Gibran Washington: Yeah, so I don’t know if I found my way to cannabis or cannabis found me a long time ago, but my road with cannabis has been a long one — I guess some would say I’m a lifer in that regard. I smoked my first joint when I was ten with one of my older brothers, and that started my introduction and my journey through cannabis. Throughout high school, college, and athletics, I used cannabis. My brother, unfortunately, was a little ahead of his time, and he died as a casualty of the war on drugs around cannabis. Gibran Washington: My father was a big-time executive for a corporation, and he used cannabis for cancer treatment. So I had this bifurcated experience with cannabis growing up — I saw what people would call the illegitimate side of cannabis, and I saw the medicinal side, in two individuals I respected, loved, and admired even to this day. And we’re in an industry that a lot of people still have negative connotations about. Kellan Finney: Ha ha ha. Gibran Washington: So as I got into college, painkillers became the go-to for pain relief for a lot of college athletes. I leaned into CBD instead, leaned into some of those things early on. Then throughout my professional career, I was known as the guy who went home early, because happy hour was never my thing. Between four and seven I’d maybe have a club soda with a little vodka that would disappear. Gibran Washington: But I wasn’t going home to go to bed — I’d go home to smoke cannabis. You couldn’t smell like weed and be in corporate America, so I became known as “the responsible guy,” but really I was upstairs having the munchies and watching TV while everybody else was down at happy hour. So when cannabis came calling, it was a natural draw, and I was naturally interested in maybe joining a company like Ethos. But the negative connotation around what it might do to my career, and where the industry still was, meant it wasn’t necessarily where I wanted to align myself yet. Then we had a lot of different conversations, and… Gibran Washington: …talking with our former CEO, now chair of our board, David Clapper, about focusing on medical research — and being the first in the country to have a medical research partnership with Thomas Jefferson University, or any medical institution — was really a big draw. The fact that we were going to focus on the therapeutic elements while researching them, and finding use cases to apply them, was very appealing. It became more than just smoking; it became a real medicinal journey for me. Gibran Washington: I’d been thinking a lot about my brother’s experience, my father’s experience, and my own, and how I could bring all of those experiences into cannabis. Luckily, I came in as a vice president, and within twelve months I was able to move from VP to CEO and take over this wonderful organization. Bryan Fields: There has to be a feeling when you first came into the industry, thinking about the role and the change you were making. Looking back now — I always love that reflection — is there something that surprised or shocked you about the way the industry operates, the speed, the challenges? What’s the first thing that comes to mind? Gibran Washington: The first feeling was, “I’m home.” That was the first emotion I felt when I walked into the first large grow house that was ours. Some of the things you mentioned were a little shocking — the lack of technology, the lack of access to systems I’d been accustomed to using across my career. They don’t really exist in cannabis, or you get a spin-off or knockoff version of what I was used to. So that was a big shock. But the thing that impressed or shocked me the most was the people, and their passion for the plant. Gibran Washington: …and their passion for this fight, because we’ve all woken up every morning having decided to be in this industry, having openly said that we’re going to break federal law because we believe our mission and purpose are greater than the current situation we find ourselves in. Finding a group of like-minded people on this journey was probably the biggest “wow” moment — like, all y’all are crazy, all y’all are going to go out here and break the law with me. That was a huge feather in the cap, like, okay — there’s more of us out here. And it was a good feeling. Kellan Finney: With that in mind, how did you convince an established university to get on board with that whole law-breaking mentality? Gibran Washington: Luckily, a lot of the groundwork was laid by our former CEO, David Clapper, and his vision for the organization. He didn’t have a lot of what I’d call cannabis experience or exposure before he got into cannabis, but he took a different approach than most of the suits do. David — I don’t look at him as a suit, he’s really down to earth — didn’t have a lot of experience with cannabis, but he understood that this plant was medicine. This plant, historically, for thousands of years, was medicine. So let’s keep… Gibran Washington: …that thought process as we developed this company and went after our clinical registrant license in Pennsylvania. We honed in on and held onto that initial thought — this is what we need to do. He introduced himself to Thomas Jefferson University through some of our board members, and Dr. Graupf-Worshtra, one of the lead oncologists there, was also working toward some of these same conversations in her field. The marrying of the two was perfect. I got to inherit that relationship and figure out… Gibran Washington: …how to evolve it, how to bring products into the market — which we’re going to start doing this year and into next year — that are based in research. Not survey-based research, but actual hands-on clinical research that we’re able to do in Pennsylvania. That’s how the journey went. Convincing them, I think, was both easy and hard, but Thomas Jefferson has proven itself to be forward-thinking in how it approaches cannabis and a lot of other medicinal approaches. Gibran Washington: We’re talking oncology, pain management, things of that nature. So it was the right relationship for both of us at the right time. Bryan Fields: I can only imagine they’d have to be a forward-looking university, because there are so many universities that take a very different, much less open approach. Take us through the research process — some of what’s going on, maybe at a higher level. What was the goal? Was it to attack certain areas and understand certain concepts, or is it more open-ended — whatever you figure out? Gibran Washington: I think it’s a combination of both. We started with pain and sleep — obviously the two big ones when we talk about use cases for cannabis. We’re currently in one of our larger pain studies; the sleep study is coming next. Some of our initial pain results show that both low-dose and high-dose cannabis have a huge impact. But the thing that’s really shocking is that high-dose THC has less impact on pain than high-dose CBD does. Gibran Washington: But we’re finding that CBD by itself isn’t what you want — CBD with some of those other cannabinoids, whether a major cannabinoid like THC or some of the minor ones, that entourage effect of multiple cannabinoids at once has a real impact on people’s pain tolerance. The other area we’re starting to work on is sexual wellness, coming up next. When you sit down with someone and educate them on how to use a product, their experience with that product is usually a whole lot better. Gibran Washington: …than someone just looking at a menu with 500 different items and picking one. Then it doesn’t work, or it’s too much THC, and they lose sight of what they were setting out to do — usually anxiety, sleep, or pain, the top three things people are looking for with cannabis. Bryan Fields: What you’re saying is so important. When people have a problem and are looking for a solution from a medicinal standpoint, their expectation is that the product they select will solve that need. And what your team is doing on the research side is digging into the unknowns and figuring out which levers to dial in to deliver those results. That’s so important, because some people walk into a dispensary in pain, get a product, and it doesn’t deliver — and their first thought is, “maybe cannabis just can’t…” Gibran Washington: Yeah, maybe cannabis is causing my anxiety, or causing me more grief, that kind of thing. It’s like — no. Some corporate suits, and I wore a suit for most of my career too, believed THC was the marketing tool for the cannabis industry because they didn’t understand cannabis. I grew up mostly in Florida — I live there now — and I bought most of my weed in a supermarket parking lot. Gibran Washington: It was in a cellophane bag with no name on it, and it was whatever the guy told me it was. The way I judged it was: after I used the product, did it work or not? It wasn’t the glitz and glamour of the packaging graphics or the highest THC number — it was whether the product met my need. Nowadays we just chase THC, THC, THC, and at the same time we’ve bred the plant to not produce all these other wonderful cannabinoids. There are 117 cannabinoids we know about today in the cannabis plant, and we only focus on one. Gibran Washington: I was probably smoking sixteen or seventeen percent THC back then, and I haven’t smoked stuff that could put you out for days. So we’ve gotten onto this gravy train of THC, THC, THC — corporate America is the one that’s missed the ball completely, saying THC is the way to go, when we should be talking about all these other cannabinoids. If you’re having trouble with sleep, don’t take THC — you’re going to be up all night having nightmares. Get something high in CBN, or at least a strain with high… Gibran Washington: …some of these elements that the original corporate cannabis folks went about to figure out how to market and monetize this plant. We’re starting to hopefully break through and have different conversations around cannabis, because I can do a blind test and give you the highest THC at 38 percent, and if you’re used to 20 percent, you’re probably not going to notice much difference. Bryan Fields: The communication piece is probably the hardest part. For them, it was the lowest-hanging fruit — the easiest message was “more of this, the higher you feel,” that direct lineage. Now you’re facing the same challenge in the other direction, where people have associated those things so tightly that when you try to say, “you want a balanced approach,” it’s a whole educational effort layered on top to reformulate how people think, so they understand that when they buy something, higher doesn’t mean better. Gibran Washington: Exactly. The education piece is probably the hardest — sometimes you feel like you’re alone in it. We’ve invested a lot in education, both internally and externally. The research partnership is one element, but our LMS system and teaching our employees about cannabis is one of our biggest focal points. We’ve done more than 98 percent of the cannabis community, but we’re still 75 percent away from where we want to be as an organization, I’d say. Kellan Finney: Yeah. Gibran Washington: So what we can do with our internal guests — our employees — and our external guests is probably going to be our differentiator over the next two to three years, because people are going to start coming to us with real questions and real use cases for what they’re trying to treat. And I don’t care if it’s our products or not — I really don’t. I want people to get cannabis into their system the right way, so they can figure out how to use it on a daily basis, not just once in a while, because cannabis can be used… Gibran Washington: …on an everyday basis if you know how to use it. Now, if you want to be zonked out high all day, this probably isn’t the best substance for you. But if you’re trying to get away from cigarettes, get away from anxiety, get away from all these other things, there are ways to do that without being psychoactively intoxicated throughout your day. You can have great days in between your activities. Bryan Fields: That’s one of my favorite experiences — when I give somebody a product and they look at the THC first and go, “ah, it’s only five milligrams.” And I say, just trust me on this. Then afterward I see the big smile on their face — it’s got a few other things in there — and they say, “I don’t feel disoriented, I just feel relaxed and happy, having a great time.” And I think, that’s the entire point. You don’t need to hide in the closet, you don’t need to cover up — you can enjoy yourself in a social setting and just feel a little more relaxed. Gibran Washington: There you go — that’s the entire clip. Bryan Fields: And that’s the part I’m most excited about for the future — but the part that’s so challenging is, how do we disseminate that information, led by you, but simplified enough given all the cannabinoids and all the challenges? How do we share it so someone like my mom or my aunt can walk into a dispensary and feel comfortable getting the information they need to land on the right product? Gibran Washington: I think we have to start making products labeled around use case. If you think about any other drug or substance — no one’s trying to figure out all the different use cases for goldenseal, echinacea, or OxyContin. They don’t know the chemical compounds that make up that substance. If you try to get into that, you’ll lose 98 percent of people. So simplifying and creating effect-based products — saying, this product is going to help you with X. Gibran Washington: That’s how you keep educating, one by one. On a mass scale — that’s a great question. I think there are a lot of individuals like me who want to do these things, but until some of the larger MSO partners decide to shift the conversation from THC to THC to THC, I think we’ll have a hard time shifting it nationally. Regionally, though, we feel we’re doing a good job in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Ohio. Gibran Washington: We’re changing that conversation and that narrative. Our retail volume is twice the size of our retail footprint — I like to call it our “little” retail business. Guests are telling us they’ll drive past other dispensaries to come to ours for the experience, the whole encompassing experience. We carry your products, you carry ours, but what happens when you come through our door is always going to be different. Gibran Washington: Hopefully more and more people get into the educational element. I come from the food and beverage business, and educating people about food or beer is natural. So why can’t that be natural in this industry too? Why can’t you go in and ask about a strain of cannabis the same way you’d ask about a glass of wine, and have a sommelier — an expert — walk you through it? We’re building… Gibran Washington: …those kinds of experiences inside a cannabis space, and doing it within five to seven minutes. People think it can’t be done, and we’re doing it time and time again. Kellan Finney: I think one of the biggest missing pieces for people who’ve tried to execute something like that is your deep relationship with an institution providing actual research and backing. With that in mind, how do you get that information into your budtenders’ hands? Is there a weekly meeting where you go over the work everyone’s doing to build… Kellan Finney: …an information pipeline, so it can be communicated seamlessly to customers? Walk us through that. Gibran Washington: Great question. Going back to the restaurant world — we still do shift meetings, that’s a thing, and we believe in making sure everyone has the information they need as it comes down the pipeline. Every time we release a new strain, I’ll send you one of our strain cards — it goes in-depth on what the plant is, what the specific strain is, some of the use cases for it. That gives budtenders a starting point for those conversations. Kellan Finney: Yeah. Gibran Washington: The big thing for us with education is that it’s based on data, because one of our lead growers says he only trusts God — everybody else has to bring data. So we make sure we’re bringing good data to these people, so when they’re talking to our guests, they’re confident and can back up what they’re saying with good data. Kellan Finney: It’s like a journal club. Bryan Fields: I loved it. Kellan Finney: So your shift meeting is kind of like a journal club too, it sounds like. Gibran Washington: I guess I could use that. Bryan Fields: I love that you reference your grower and his trust in God on that. Everybody who’s listened to this and knows a grower like that knows the type — “no, this is the only way, you’ve got to feel the plant.” Gibran Washington: Yeah. He believes you’ve got to feel the plant, but he also trusts data. He thinks the false fallacy a lot of growers fall into is trying to feel out a plant that doesn’t have stable genetics — it’s fickle, temperamental. You have to make sure what you’re doing is tracked to data or science, or you’ll be all over the place. But most companies don’t grow the way we grow — we’re going to drop about eighty different strains in Pennsylvania this year. Kellan Finney: Amen. Gibran Washington: And when you count the different phenotypes, you’re talking over a hundred. We’re not just growing what we think works — we’re looking for the best cannabis we possibly can grow. We’ll go through that process every year, as long as I’m running this organization, until we have a stable of thirty fire strains in our premium category, and another thirty or forty in our… Gibran Washington: …value brand that are just as good as anyone else’s premium. Until we get there, we’re going to keep bringing in the best of the best from around the United States. Bryan Fields: That’s a great competitive approach. Is that fundamentally rooted in the science your team is doing — recognizing that a certain combination of cannabinoids delivers a certain effect, and then trying to breed a strain with that combination? Gibran Washington: Yeah, we’re looking at cannabinoids, terpene profiles, and the makeup of TAC — not THC, total active cannabinoids — so we can figure out how this plant is going to do in our environment, our structure. But then there’s also trust in the breeders you’re dealing with. Are we against someone telling us, “oh, it’s fire”? No — that goes on the scale as a vote, fire is important. But some of the other elements — those matter just as much. Gibran Washington: Things like total active cannabinoids, terpene profile, average THC — those are really important to us, because we still have to sell it. I believe fifteen or sixteen percent makes a great sativa strain, but we still have to figure out how to get something we love that the customer will also buy. So what’s the bridge to get there? We’re actually working — sorry to go off on a tangent — on our own sativa room. We’re bringing out some Acapulco Gold, some… Kellan Finney: Let’s go. Gibran Washington: …some Colombian Thai and stuff like that, and some Durban Poison. We’re nervous, because we don’t know how they’re going to test, even though we know these are what everyone’s asking for. But will people actually buy them? When those drop later this fall — landrace strains, straight from seed, like people have asked for — we’ll find out. We do believe sixteen, seventeen percent is plenty potent enough for… Gibran Washington: …ninety-eight percent of people. Bryan Fields: For those customers you’re envisioning buying this product, do you have a way to target them on your list, so when the strain does drop — since it’s probably going to be limited — you can get it to them? I think in those instances, those people really want those strains, so it’s about how you communicate and disseminate that information to the right people at the right time. Gibran Washington: I mean, like all of us, we use a CRM — we track people’s preferences in our CRM files. So if you’re a concentrate person, a vape person, a flower person, an indica person, a hybrid person, we know. When things drop, we can tailor messaging and send you things we believe you’ll like. But with these limited sativa drops, honestly, we’re sending them to everybody on our loyalty and mailing lists, because we want to get these into people’s hands to show them a few things. Gibran Washington: One, that this is the cannabis you grew up on. Two, that this is fine cannabis if you just want to try it. I’d love to take the labels off and just give it to people, but we want enough people to try it and give us feedback on whether we should drop another ten crops of this. Fifty people trying it won’t justify me dropping a whole room of sativa. We need enough of the masses to try this product, at least, and tell us whether it works for them or… Gibran Washington: …because I think we’ll all be surprised. We’ve all been lied to, because testing — we all wish it were objective, but it’s very subjective. Let’s call a spade a spade: you can send the same sample to four different testing facilities and get four different results. For anyone out there who’s wondered what’s going on — it’s frustrating running a multi-state cannabis company and seeing that. What are we doing? Kellan Finney: What do you want it to say? Bryan Fields: It’s impossible. Gibran Washington: Lab shopping is something we don’t believe in — looking around for whoever gives you the best results. We’re human, so that shouldn’t be a thing. This should be a standardized process, and I think that would change everything. Kellan Finney: Yeah. Kellan Finney: It shouldn’t be a for-profit space, in my opinion — but that’s a different conversation. It’s just tough, it creates exactly that issue. Bryan Fields: I think what you’re saying is that you’re looking for an objective data point to understand something, and what they’re really telling you is, “well, what do you want it to say? How high do you want this number to go?” And that’s the problem. Gibran Washington: Yeah. I don’t think it’s quite that wild — they’re not just outright asking what you want. But if you send the same exact batch, without even calling anyone, to three different testing facilities, why do you get three different results? I don’t know. Why do you get different terpene profiles? I don’t know. I wish someone could sit down and explain how the same batch sent to different labs comes back with results that vary five to eight percent. Kellan Finney: Nah, of course. Gibran Washington: I think all states should probably be like Colorado — just give a range. Stop chasing the exact number, just say it’s twenty to thirty-five percent and be done with it, instead of putting out one specific number that tells you all kinds of things about the plant, when what you really want to know isn’t in the THC number at all. We’ve been teaching our customers: stop looking for THC, look at TAC, and look at the difference between THC and TAC. That’s the strain you want. Kellan Finney: Yeah. Kellan Finney: Yeah. Gibran Washington: That difference between THC and TAC — that’s the cannabis I want to smoke. If it’s 18 percent THC and 27 percent total TAC, I’m buying all of it — I want every last bit of that, because it has so many of those minor cannabinoids I want. I want some CBGA, some THCB, some CBN, some CBC, some CBD — I want the entourage effect of everything that happens in the plant. I don’t want zero percent of this, zero percent of that, and then all THC. Kellan Finney: And TAC is catchy too, right? It’s a catchy acronym. Gibran Washington: It’s a real catchy acronym. We’re actually changing our uniforms — two things are going on them. One is “ask us about TAC.” The other is “no remediation.” That’s something a lot of us corporate MSOs don’t want to talk about — the fact that we don’t own a microwave. Do you? That’s one of our big claims to fame. We don’t own remediation equipment. We never will. Bryan Fields: Yeah. Gibran Washington: Why would you need to? Learn how to grow. Bryan Fields: Do you want to explain what that is, in case someone isn’t familiar with the term? Gibran Washington: Yeah — it’s basically when cannabis isn’t grown to the regulatory standard set by whatever state you’re in, and instead of putting that into a processed product, which would help get rid of whatever mold or material may be in there, a lot of corporate MSOs, and some regional or local single-state operators, throw it into a microwave because they don’t know what they’re doing. Gibran Washington: And they kill everything in the plant — terpenes, THC, cannabinoids — along with whatever else they’re trying to kill, mainly mold. Then they put it in a jar and sell it to you. Not many companies will stand in front of you and say, “if you’ve ever bought something from us, it was never microwaved, and it still passed all regulatory tests” — even at 10,000 CFUs on the East Coast versus 100,000 on the West Coast. We’re still able to pass tests and deliver what we feel is West Coast-style growing. Bryan Fields: TAC is so sticky — that phrase just lingers in my head, thinking about asking to “ask about TAC.” That’s such a smart approach, because someone walks in assuming they’re going to buy based on THC, and if they didn’t know about TAC, now they ask, because it’s catchy. Then they understand, okay, I should be buying based on this. And the best part is the social share — when someone says, “oh, I got this great product, where’d you buy it?” and it gets explained back: “the person was super helpful, walked me through this process.” Bryan Fields: “And it actually delivered the effects I was looking for, versus my other experience.” I think that’s the wave that happens where people start understanding the components. I caught that right away — it’s a very smart, very sticky approach. Gibran Washington: It’s sticky and it’s smart — thank you for both of those terms. Because of our limited ability to do large-scale marketing and be everywhere with cannabis marketing, it’s a grassroots, hand-to-mouth kind of approach that we’re trying to figure out ways to accelerate. But what we’ve found is that in stores where the general manager is gung-ho about this approach, we’re seeing year-over-year growth in revenue. People are catching on. This matters, especially with price compression. Gibran Washington: You’re hearing me — the same stores are growing in revenue. People wonder, how did that happen, is something else nearby closing? No. People are coming in for the experience and saying, wait, this is different. I can buy weed almost anywhere — the street corner, the guy down the street — but my experience with cannabis here is different, unlike anything else I’ve been exposed to. I come from the hospitality business, and that kind of hospitality approach… Gibran Washington: …that one-by-one, grassroots, word-of-mouth approach — that’s how restaurants are built. We believe that’s going to be our staying power, both short-term and long-term. I want everyone to talk about Ethos Cannabis and our product lines — Natural Selections, Headliner, or 11 — and that flower product. But even more, I want people talking about their experience when they come into one of our retail stores. Kellan Finney: Do you run different messaging campaigns across the various states, to see what works? Is that something you’re executing right now? Gibran Washington: Without a doubt — whether it’s promotional activities or messaging, whether it’s the chalkboard or the TV screens, we try different approaches depending on where we are, even within a state. We believe we have a few… Kellan Finney: Yeah. Kellan Finney: So sometimes it fails in one state and succeeds in another — is that a thing? It completely flops in, say, Pennsylvania or Ohio, and then succeeds somewhere else? Gibran Washington: Say that again. Gibran Washington: Oh, without a doubt. Pennsylvania is far more receptive — it comes down to education. The ability to educate in a fully evolved recreational market like Massachusetts is a lot harder, because there are so many choices. But we do find people in both markets — given time, maybe it’s your first trip, your second trip, maybe your third. Kellan Finney: Ha ha ha. Kellan Finney: I like the word choice. Gibran Washington: …that you eventually want to have that conversation. So we give our pharmacists the ability to give consultations in every store we run, and we’re also figuring out how to give consultations from our pharmacists across the country, because we feel that’s a need a lot of people aren’t servicing — people do have questions. TAC, terpenes, whatever it is, “what does this messaging mean, I’m scared to ask a question” — that’s still a real thing for people in stores. So finding the right messaging depending on the state, and the right approach… Gibran Washington: …for that individual guest, is something we’re constantly trying to tweak and figure out, because it isn’t one-size-fits-all. You have folks who say “I know everything about cannabis, I’ve been smoking for forty years,” and okay, fine — we’ll talk to you on your tenth visit. But the person who’s nervous, who’s just heard about cannabis, is really receptive to all the information you can give them. So you want to make sure their start with cannabis is as close to perfect as possible. Bryan Fields: Can you lay out for our listeners the different markets you’re operating in? We touched on Pennsylvania and Ohio, but I want them to get a sense of the range, because the challenges Kellan alluded to are so hard, and I don’t think people always realize how hard it is to juggle moving fast in one place while also getting it right everywhere at the same time. Gibran Washington: Yeah, we’re only in three states right now. I know a lot of people think that’s big, but we want to be much bigger — at least six or seven is probably our goal. We never want to be in twenty or thirty states; we don’t think that’s a tangible footprint, given that stable genetics aren’t scalable that way. We can get into that later, but there’s no way you can find enough good growers to grow for you across twenty-six states. If you can, good for you — that means none of the rest of us have any growers left. Gibran Washington: Looking at it state by state: we’re in Massachusetts, which is recreational and medical. We’re in Pennsylvania, our largest state, which is medical only right now. And we’re in Ohio. We used to be in New Jersey and Maryland — we pulled out of both, for the same reason: we weren’t vertical. If we can’t control our supply chain, we don’t want to be in the state. We want to be as vertical as possible. That’s why you don’t see us in New York yet, until they figure out that piece. Gibran Washington: I don’t think you should be just a retailer or just a wholesaler — you should have the ability to be vertical if you can withstand it or afford it. So those are the three states we operate in. We have a retail footprint of about fourteen stores; we had fifteen or sixteen at one point, and about three more will probably open this year to get us back up. We have grow facilities in all three states, ranging from about a 7,000-square-foot canopy… Gibran Washington: …all the way up to a 25,000-square-foot canopy. You’ll never hear of anything more than a 50,000- or 60,000-square-foot canopy from us, because it goes back to quality over quantity. We don’t believe you can grow quality cannabis in a 100,000- or 200,000-square-foot canopy, because you can’t physically watch and treat the plant with all the nuances it needs. Those who can do that, I tip my hat to you, but I guarantee I’d like to see you in a head-to-head blind… Gibran Washington: …taste test against our cannabis. Because the best weed in America is going to be in the basement — I’m sorry, it is. It’s going to be a small basement with a guy with ten or twelve plants, singing to them, talking to them, playing music the way they like it, hand-watering everything, bringing in his buddies who also like cannabis to trim it. There’s nothing but love and passion touching that plant, and that matters. My grandmother’s tomatoes were always better than the supermarket’s tomatoes. Why? Because she loved them. Gibran Washington: And that’s always going to be true of basement grows. So our best grow is our 7,000-square-foot canopy. Bryan Fields: That’s a hundred percent accurate, and it’s hard to understand until you’ve seen it — once you see the person loving those plants, you understand why they deliver. It’s an incredible thing; someone should make a documentary about it one day. But between the grows, the dispensaries, and extraction — are there any other parts of the supply chain your team operates in? Gibran Washington: Yeah, we do the whole supply chain. We have delivery transport in some of the states we operate in, and we also use third-party transport. We do processing, pre-rolls — any way, shape, or form you can work the cannabis plant, with the exception of capsules. We walked away from tinctures a while ago, though we’re looking at different ways to possibly get back into that space — we still make tinctures for our studies. We do hash rosin now; we’re working on those formulations. We didn’t want to get into a lot of that originally. Gibran Washington: I believe in the Five Guys approach — you don’t need a huge menu, you need to be damn good at the things that are on it. That was what we were dialing in over the last year and a half: be really good at our core business. Everybody wants to chase rosin — I get it, it’s a natural next step — but people forget how hard it is to make good distillate, let alone good live resin, let alone good concentrates. Let’s be really good at that, and then get into hash rosin. That’s where we are now. Gibran Washington: We can do the whole chain, but we choose which categories we want to play in for different reasons. I’m a restaurant guy at heart, so it’s a hamburger-stand kind of thinking: I have these ingredients, how many things can I make with just these ingredients before I need to bring in new ones and make items that might only be a one-trick pony? We’re really trying to focus on efficiency, so we can deliver… Gibran Washington: …good quality cannabis at scale, instead of worrying about all the different loss leaders a lot of companies try to run. Bryan Fields: I love that you keep referencing the restaurant and food-and-beverage approach, because pulling from other industries is so critical — cannabis isn’t the first industry to operate in this space, and there are tools and technologies from elsewhere you can apply here. You mentioned earlier that a lot of those systems just don’t exist yet in cannabis. Are there other tools or elements you’re bringing in from the restaurant business, for extraction or cultivation, to make the job easier, better, more efficient? Gibran Washington: Yeah, we’re nerds over here — we’re always trying to find the best technology. We bring in inventory management systems from retail that I used in the past, and processes we used in food and beverage. Unfortunately a lot of those systems won’t work in cannabis because we’re federally illegal, so we’re finding patchwork and bridges to bring some of those ideas into fruition. The team is full of brilliant people who’ve done different things internally, plus outside consultants who help us build that bridge. Gibran Washington: The biggest thing I brought from food and beverage, and reinforced, is the service element. I’m a servant leader — anyone who works for me will tell you that. I believe in the upside-down triangle, where the most important person is the person at the bottom — that’s me and everyone like me. We’re out here to serve, first our internal guests, then our customers. And I think that restaurant-business approach… Gibran Washington: …is probably the biggest thing I brought — true service. If you’ve never worked in a restaurant, had someone yell at you, curse at you, and still had to smile and treat them like a human being, you don’t really get it. Bringing that mentality into cannabis, with a lot of folks moving fast in an industry that’s emerging and growing, was huge for culture and for people’s relationship with the plant itself, because now everyone, especially in cultivation, is thinking like chefs. Gibran Washington: “Is my plate perfect? Is there anything else I need to do to make sure this plant is perfect before I let it go?” They’re bringing that fine-dining mindset all through our value chain, our supply chain. And then it ends up in the guest’s hand, and the product associates — the budtenders — give that same fine-dining type of experience, cultivating something special for the guest. Bryan Fields: People know throughout the supply chain that expectations are high, and that it’s not about being as fast as possible — it’s about doing it meticulously and right, every step of the way. And as you’ve shown, when you communicate that to the customer, they recognize and appreciate it. That’s one of the reasons they’ll drive an extra ten minutes to come to your dispensary. Gibran Washington: Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head. My shirt — slow plug here — has our theme on it: better is better. It’s from my favorite poet: “May the best of you yesterday be the worst of you tomorrow.” That’s Sean Carter, for those who don’t know — that’s Jay-Z. Bryan Fields: Yeah. Gibran Washington: Better is better. That’s our thought process — we’re not looking at the outside world and asking what they’re doing better than us. It’s, how can we get better at what we’re doing right now? We had a great day yesterday, great. How do we make it better tomorrow? That constant-improvement approach, that little-bit-by-little-bit approach, those micro-wins — we believe in them around here. And we believe failure is just going to be part of our journey toward success; it’s not terminal for us. Better is better — that’s our philosophy throughout the organization. Bryan Fields: Another thing that would be better is if Pennsylvania went adult-use. Is there any hope for upcoming changes you can share with us? Gibran Washington: Well, I learned somewhere — a movie, or a talk — that hope is not a viable business strategy. So, you know, I hope about a lot of stuff; I’m going to buy a lottery ticket later and hope I win that too. But we feel the journey toward recreational cannabis in Pennsylvania is well underway. We know there’s a fiscal cliff coming in 2027 where the state is going to need more tax revenue. Bryan Fields: Me too, for you. Gibran Washington: I mean, what better way to get more tax revenue than to keep taxing us in the cannabis industry? So we can feel hopeful there — they seem willing to bring down some of the barriers around the recreational side. We think whether it’s this year or next year at the latest, it’s going to happen. The governor is behind it, and we feel both the House and the Senate in Pennsylvania are leaning that way — they just have to figure out what the language looks like. The state-store model was a non-starter for all of us in the industry, but we understood… Gibran Washington: …that was part of the political process we had to get through. But there are some good bills we feel are coming together, co-written, that should get through both chambers and create a recreational program in what would be the last, and largest, state in the Northeast that isn’t recreational. Bryan Fields: Is that part of the job more surprising to you — the political dynamics? Because what you’ve laid out on the science side, the rigor and understanding, should be super compelling — like, that should be enough on its own to win over people’s fears, given what the data says. I know that’s just logic, and I know that’s not how the world works, but that’s how my brain thinks. Gibran Washington: It is. Unfortunately, we’re not in politics, so we have to remember our politicians — locally, regionally, federally — are human beings, and there are lobbyists giving them campaign money and driving the narrative differently. Unfortunately, in American politics, it’s about money. Big pharma is against us. One of the largest advocates against recreational cannabis in any state, or across the country, is the federal prison-guard union and their lobbyists. Gibran Washington: There’s a lot of people — alcohol and tobacco don’t want us around either. And then, obviously, some people have had a horrible experience with cannabis, and to them it’s the worst thing ever, the devil’s lettuce, probably what they still call it. All of those people have voices, as they should, but we believe science and data should always win out. Unfortunately, special interest groups have gotten in the way of that at the local, state, and federal level. Gibran Washington: It makes a lot of sense — this is better than the alcohol people are drinking, better than the cigarettes people are smoking. The Surgeon General said at the end of last year that alcohol is the third-leading cause of cancer, and we’re still drinking it. It makes no sense to me that this substance, which no one has ever overdosed on, and which no one has shown causes cancer — matter of fact, it may do the opposite, though we can’t say that with certainty… Gibran Washington: But I do know Rick Simpson is a real person. My father is a real person. I know people who’ve used cannabis as part of their treatment and had great results. So I don’t get it. But if you try to apply logic to politics, your head will explode. There’s a reason lifelong politicians aren’t lifelong business people — they wouldn’t survive on the outside, because they’d have to make real decisions with real short-term and long-term impact. Bryan Fields: The Surgeon General coming out and saying it’s number three — some people were like, “well, at least it wasn’t number one or two,” and then that story disappeared so fast. It was like, this is huge, and then — gone. Gibran Washington: So close. Gibran Washington: You don’t see any commercials about it, nothing about the fact that it’s the third-leading cause of cancer, and the number-one cause of vehicular homicide. Bryan Fields: C’mon! Kellan Finney: No public health campaign. Bryan Fields: Five. Gibran Washington: I don’t know how many different ways the nation needs to hear that cannabis is safer than what people have been using — whether you’re drinking it, smoking it, or consuming it any of the other ways you can consume cannabis. It’s a safer product for you than almost anything else you’re probably taking. Definitely safer than Oxys. Definitely safer than Xanax. Definitely safer than Ritalin. No one takes cannabis and then has to go on liver medication because of it. Bryan Fields: That’s… Gibran Washington: Nobody’s taking something for high blood pressure and suddenly their heart doesn’t work the same way. The knock-on effects with cannabis are just a lot less. I’m not saying it’s a perfect plant, I’m not saying it’s a cure-all — I’m saying it has to be a real conversation about the therapeutic application of what this plant can do for day-to-day life. We’ve got to stop putting it in the box of “worst thing in the world.” Bryan Fields: Science and data should definitely lead the way — it’s hard to argue with that. At the end of the day, it doesn’t have to be about personalities, it doesn’t have to be about experience. Just look at the science and the data and let that lead. Gibran Washington: Yeah. We got a vaccine in seven months and trusted the data and the science behind it. We’ve got a couple thousand years of cannabis being grown and used across continents, and I don’t know why people don’t trust that. Kellan Finney: Amen to that. Bryan Fields: Any new states you’ve got your eye on, or a sleeper state? I know you want to be in more states, and you’re only in three right now. Gibran Washington: Definitely keeping an eye on places like Kentucky — we like limited-license states, expanding our footprint in the areas we’re already in. We believe going wide instead of deep was the failure of a lot of MSOs. We think you need to go deeper into the markets you’re in and own them. I know you’re in New York, but there’s no Wegmans south of DC, and there’s no Publix north of Virginia — and both chains do just fine. We believe we can take that same… Gibran Washington: …philosophical approach: be a regional powerhouse, where people in and around the state look for our products because they know, in this area, we’re the best of the best. Going back to my brother — growing up around cannabis, I’ve never met a drug dealer who controlled all fifty states. You can control a city, maybe a block or two, maybe a region, and have some of the best cannabis, but you can’t control the entire country. That’s a fool’s errand. Gibran Washington: There are 2,000 different genetics in my little business alone. If you think you’re going to come up with one strain you can grow every day of the week that everyone’s going to buy — good luck. Khalifa Kush is only popular in the numbers because Trulieve has 150 stores in one state, which we could talk about until I’m blue in the face — how crazy that concentration is. But that’s why Khalifa Kush is so popular. Gibran Washington: It’s not because it’s doing a bang-up job in Massachusetts or Pennsylvania or wherever else it’s sold — it’s because of the concentration in one state. Look at the Cookies brand — one of the most popular around — but Cookies strains don’t dominate everywhere. It’s not about that. There’s so much more to it. We’ll see where it all shakes out. Kentucky, New Jersey — we love both of those states. We’d love to keep growing our footprint where we are. I’d love twenty-five or thirty stores in Pennsylvania. Gibran Washington: Eight to ten in Ohio, and if they let the cap come down in Massachusetts, seven or eight there. And from there, let’s keep picking up distressed assets that are already open and add them to our portfolio. When we add a distressed asset, our plan is to try to leave the name intact, and hopefully the ownership intact, and help them continue their brand and their message. We don’t want to be an organization where it’s just our name on every wall. Bryan Fields: Have you looked into that lately? There’s a sentiment that a lot of teams are facing more and more trouble, so there could be more opportunities for distressed acquisitions. Gibran Washington: Everything you read in the news isn’t always true, but the fact that a lot of the cannabis industry is heading toward default is very true. The number of distressed assets that have crossed our desk is at an all-time high, unfortunately. We’ve got to figure out ways to help some of these smaller operators stay in business, because they’re the true heart and spirit of cannabis, and unfortunately the large organizations will keep coming in and picking them off. But even the large organizations and MSOs — I think people are going to be surprised over the next four to six months at how distressed some of them are. Gibran Washington: $200 million-plus businesses failing horribly because of decisions they’ve made. So yes, we’ve seen a lot of assets, and there are some conversations happening right now about expanding our footprint, but it has to be the right deal at the right time. Whether we’re in this for the long term or short term, you have to make good decisions, because bad ones come back to bite you, sooner or later. We don’t want to overpay for assets, and we’re not going to pay for what you’ve already put into your business. Gibran Washington: That’s not our fault — that was your decision, your investment — and some people just need to come to terms with the fact that they may have lost their money, and now they can only get twenty-five cents on the dollar for their initial investment. Bryan Fields: Well said. Last question — tell us about the Pennsylvania Medical Marijuana Education and Research Summit. Gibran Washington: It’s going to be the best one they’ve ever had, because we’re hosting it and running it, and it’s going to be a really experiential conference with some of the best minds in Pennsylvania on the research side of cannabis. We’ve got people from the governor’s office coming to give keynote addresses, and we’re really going to nerd out about the science of cannabis — a lot of the research we’re doing, a lot of the research some of our other CRC partners in Pennsylvania are doing, and where we think the future of cannabis is headed, both in Pennsylvania and across the country. Gibran Washington: So really, it’s a platform for us to have a formalized, truly interactive, hands-on conversation with participants about this journey cannabis is on, and what our role in that journey is, both now and in the future. Bryan Fields: I love it. So Gibran, for our listeners who want to get in touch, want to buy those products — where can they find you? Gibran Washington: Yeah, ethoscannabis.com is where we are — all our socials are on there too. We’re on Twitter, Instagram, all the other social stuff — I think there’s even an Instagram account for me, though I don’t personally do social media. But we’re very easy to find. If you’re looking for good education, please go to our Learn page. We’ve got some of the best education around cannabis, whether you’re in one of our states or not, whether you shop in our stores or not — our job is to be a thought leader in the space. So please check out all the information in our blogs and Learn pages. Bryan Fields: Yeah. Gibran Washington: We have what you’re looking for, however you want it, whenever you want it. We promise you that. Bryan Fields: I love it. I’ll link it all up in the show notes. Thanks for taking the time — this was a lot of fun. Gibran Washington: Appreciate you guys. Thanks for having me. Bryan Fields: Thank you.