When I Made The Executive Decision to Say Fuck Corporate America and Started Growing Cannabis
It was 2011 and I was a mid-level cog in the corporate machine that is Best Buy. During this time period many companies were struggling to stay afloat, and Best Buy was no different. Although we were a Fortune 35 company at the time and our name recognition was as strong as ever, at the end of the day we were on the back end of the great recession. Luxury electronics during this time period were not in high demand and I managed the largest department in Indianapolis. Needless to say this was not a great position to be in.
It was a typical rainy Midwest autumn day in Indy and I woke up and immediately knew I was going to call into work. You know the type of day, you wake up and just say “nope, not today.” I did some real soul searching and through some introspection I knew in my heart that I was done with retail, an industry I had been working in for about four years at the time.
I was 28 years old, but I actually tried my hand at growing cannabis much earlier in middle school. This was with absolutely no idea what I was doing with some shwag bag seeds, needless to say I was not successful. But I always wanted to get back to growing, as a long time cannabis consumer the black market was always trash in Indiana. I didn’t live in the Emerald Triangle in California, so good heady nugs were hard to come by and I pretty much had to smoke whatever I could get my hands on. Often times just obtaining cannabis was a convoluted journey and if you were lucky enough to score by the end of it, often times it was some trash Mexi-brick and God knows what was actually contained in the product and how it was grown.
As someone that had been in cannabis distribution much of my adolescent and adult life I thought, “why don’t I try growing it myself and start my own business.” I went to a head shop called The Magic School Bus in Indy, bought The Cannabis Grow Bible and read the whole thing cover to cover that day. The next day I went into work and put in my two week notice. I cashed out my 401k and used that as the seed capital to start my grow.
Indiana is one of only a handful of states that maintains full prohibition of cannabis in 2023 so obviously it was illegal AF in 2011. I knew that I was putting myself on the line in a serious way, having a grow busted of the size I was looking to create would mean real prison time for me. But like so many things in this life I said fuck it and went for it.
Over the next several months I bought equipment and built out my grow. I worked a couple odd jobs during this time to pay the bills, but I was done with full-time retail. The joy that I felt in undertaking my grow was euphoric. Not only was I working for myself and saying fuck the man, but I was doing something I was very passionate about in a medium that I loved.
Not only was I growing, but I developed a sophisticated distribution network in two cities. My business was complete with branded medical vials as well as a full catalog of all the strains I had available for people and I gave this catalog to all of my distributors. This catalog was complete with descriptions, terpene profiles as well as all strain lineage. I was running the first and last black market dispensary of its kind in history.
Two and a half years later my grow was busted by the state police, how that happened and what happened after will be the topic of my next blog post.
