Music and cannabis just go together like peanut butter and jelly. Cannabis culture has been heavily influenced by musical artists and festivals and it’s a unique and valuable dynamic to our industry.
In this episode, I’m interviewing Chang Weisberg, a powerhouse in the music and cannabis industries. He shares about his amazing career, why cannabis and music are a match made in heaven, and why he created the High Hopes Summit and Festival.
We also talk about the realities of being a business owner in the cannabis space, the scary things that are happening with cannabis legislation, and Chang shares some tips with me on how to judge cannabis flower. It’s an enlightening conversation, and I hope you learn as much as I did.
If you’re a DIY cannabis hustler who is just getting into the industry, make sure to subscribe to my podcast, High Class, where I help you move past the frustration, hurdles, and red tape of the cannabis industry.
In this episode, you’ll learn…
- [04:08] Chang is a powerhouse in the cannabis industry and he shares some highlights of his amazing career
- [15:43] Chang breaks down what production means for a music festival, the difference between production and promotion, and why music and cannabis go so well together
- [21:33] The joys of owning a cannabis dispensary and meeting people from all walks of life, plus Chang shares about his new shop, New Generation
- [34:39] The responsibilities of being a cannabis license holder, plus the importance of having a real estate portfolio
- [45:54] Chang talks about why he created the High Hopes Festival
- [57:57] What’s happening in cannabis legislation around the country is scary right now
- [01:05:21] Chang gives me tips on how to judge cannabis flower
If you want to know if you’re ready to become an entrepreneur who works in the crossover between music and cannabis, be sure to tune into this episode:
Links mentioned in this episode…
About Chang
Chang Weisberg is a film producer, a hip hop festival entrepreneur, the founder of High Hopes, and a judge for Emerald Cup.
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Transcript for “High Hopes: Why Music and Cannabis are a Dynamic Duo with Entrepreneur Chang Weisberg”:
[00:00:37] Salwa Are you thinking about getting into the cannabis industry but aren’t really sure how? I’m Salwa Ibrahim, youre cannabis auntie and I’m here to help you find accelerated success in your cannabis business. And I’m sharing all the details on how to get there. So get comfy as we dive in. Today on the High Class Podcast, we have such a special guest. I am just kind of beaming from joy and excitement because this is like the first time that I get a dedicated amount of time to sit down with Mr. Chang Weisberg. Now, Chang and I met when I was on a panel for the New West Summit when we were talking about festivals and how to launch festivals and the intersection between music festivals and cannabis. And I got to admit, I was just walking in there. I wasn’t really prepared because, you know, I had just come off Grasslands and I lived this life and I’m just basically recounting my experience. But I was sitting in this panel and I’m looking to the left and I’m looking to the right. I’m like, Oh, wow, I am surrounded by such powerful people. And that is such essentially is what kicked off my relationship with Chang. Just basically listening to him talk as I’m on this panel and learning from him as if I’m in the audience. And it was just such a wonderful experience. Chang, thank you so much for nurturing our relationship over the years and reaching out and just being so kind and so accessible and so giving with your energy and your knowledge. But also thank you so much for taking the time to be on this show today.
[00:02:18] Chang I am totally stoked. This is just an extension of promoters and Cannabis Anonymous, so I can’t remember. Originally it might have been Kat that invited me onto the panel or I forget how I got there, but I was blown away too I mean, to be surrounded by yourself who had just come off doing Grasslands, which was like grabbing all the headlines and, you know, having Tim Blake next to us who had the Emerald Cup and all of us had our challenges and our joys and pain and all these other things, and to just be thrust on the stage and that had people asking those questions. It really was unique. But that was the start of what I hope and pray to be a great relationship, and it has been fun to touch base with you through your journey and hear everything that you’ve got going on. And I’m just super blessed and excited to be always supporting you and everything that you’re doing. I mean, you’re a mother, you’re in the cannabis business, you’re an awesome business person. So when I heard that you were doing your podcast, of course, I mean anything that I can do to help you and your community, if there’s any perspective that I can share with you, I’m happy to do it.
[00:03:27] Salwa Amazing. So actually talking about perspective and I’m glad you use that word. So this podcast is like essentially a teaching tool. So all these questions and things that we’re asked to try to answer them to the best of your ability in a way that’s like shining light to show other people the way.
[00:03:46] Chang I’m going to pretend like I don’t know anything that I do know, but I remember how hungry I was when I didn’t know the things that I know now. So happy to share because we need someone to take the experience that we’ve gathered to the next level. Right? We’re still in prohibition. So.
[00:04:07] Salwa Absolutely. Absolutely. Before we dive in any further, I really want to make sure it’s abundantly clear the powerhouse that is Chang that I’m talking to, I want to make sure everybody understands that your background so they know whose voice is coming across this podcast. So, Chang, can you give us a highlight of your amazing career and sort of where you are today? I know it’s long.
[00:04:33] Chang I think for the most part, people probably know me from promoting several of our shows that we’ve been promoting for about 20, 25 years, which is it’s just hard for me to say that right now. But if you’ve ever been to the Cypress Hill, smoke out, rock the bells, paid dues, you know, our High Hopes festival, most people know that myself and my crew of the Guerrilla Union crew have been working with Cypress Hill on the smoke out. We were, you know, always been a champion for prohibition and legalization, getting behind my partner B-real. So I’ve been partners with Cypress Hill for over 20 years. We still are partners. We’ve produced that festival probably a dozen times in the 20 years it wasn’t. I mean, the first eight years was consecutive and then for various reasons we were on and off and we always talk about going back through the Cypress Hill smoke out. But I think there’s been a lot of evolutions since then. And, you know, I’m still working day to day representing B-real in all of his interest as a solo artist. So that gives you a little background there. I am also for the last three years, I’m very excited that I’m finally going to be a license holder here in the city of Pomona. We’ve got a 24,000 square foot multi license facility that we’re getting ready to open in a couple of weeks.
[00:05:55] Salwa Oh, wow.
[00:05:56] Chang Yeah. Called New Generation. My partner, Justin, has another store in Santa Ana. So this will be his second store that’s that’s opening. And then we’ll have two more in Elsinore in about six months. I still have high hopes, I mean, legal cannabis. So we’re going to keep fighting the good fight. So, you know, try to be a retailer distributor. We have a small grow. As everyone knows, the price of cannabis is down at the moment, so it doesn’t make sense to pour millions of dollars into another indoor grow. Fortunately for myself, I’ve spent several years sourcing cannabis up and down the state, so I have a lot of great relationships that I’ve been nurturing. As I mentioned earlier, I’m an Emerald Cup judge. I am so thankful of all things that are on my resume. One of the best things that has happened in my life is that I get to work with the Emerald Cup team and judge hundreds of entries in the flower division and that has been a golden experience in my life. I just came back down from Santa Rosa, from our first judges sesh and quite the experience. But, you know, I do tell most people 50% of my life is music and 50% of my life is cannabis. Outside of being a father to two boys and, you know, trying to be a good husband whenever I can.
[00:07:19] Salwa Of course. Family first. But it’s so funny because I feel like in cannabis and maybe it’s the same in music. I don’t know. I only have experience in weed, but like in weed, it so quickly becomes a family affair, right? Like, it’s quickly becomes this thing that you’re so passionate about that’s so consuming that like, you know, your spouse hops in or your other partner, your brother, your kids or whatever.
[00:07:50] Chang 100%. I was the devil 20 years ago bringing the smoke out, the cypress hill smoke out to San Bernardino. People did not like cannabis. They didn’t want to affiliate with it. I couldn’t get sponsors. It was hard to get insurance. And I was like, Guys, it’s just the theme of a show. Are you kidding me? This is before, like people were allowed to smoke. Our Cypress Hill smoke out in Southern California was the first major festival to have consumption on site. That was over ten years ago. I’m just going to say that maybe 12 years ago when we did consumption, that was after the Cow Palace had already been doing their events for consumption. I was not doing sales on site. I was just fighting. So I was working with Don Duncan and we convinced the city of San Bernardino because they had no jurisdiction at the at the Orange show. So it was state. It was state jurisdiction, actually quasi jurisdiction, which only exists on two festival fairgrounds in the entire state. That’s the plight that myself and my team had to go through, being the head of a festival that was about potheads and pot music. And, you know, we backed Cypress Hill. I didn’t feel like anything that we were doing was illegal, should not be illegal to consume aspirin or grow it in your backyard. I feel at the time when it was hard to get insurance, I was working with rap acts, rock acts, dance acts. So just I had all kinds of strikes early on as a promoter going against us. But that chip on my shoulder was strong enough to get us to where we are today. Now, having the ability to get licenses, although it’s still we’re in prohibition, legal cannabis is really still not legal and people need to realize that there’s a process and we’re all paying dues. You’ve paid dues or are continuing to pay dues because you still cannot just buy a joint, go outside in the street or to a concert and legally smoke it. So until that happens, me and you Salwa, or at least myself, we’re going to keep pushing that agenda or that was and is still one of my major agendas. You know, working with the CFA, the DCC, local municipalities, it takes a whole nation of people to do some of the simplest things in cannabis and that is one of the challenges. But, you know, I think if you are in legal cannabis and you know you’re struggling or you know, I’m sure you’ve had lots of adversity, you just got to keep going back to that small voice inside you and know that you’re doing the right thing, fighting the good fight that that cannabis is not something that you should be ashamed about and talk about what it’s like to be a family person in cannabis. No one in my family smoked pot except for me, so I was always the one that had to go get ice during the party and that would be my because I don’t drink. And that was also a weird thing to a lot of my family members because they’re like, Man, you don’t drink. I was an athlete in school, so I didn’t want to affect my scholarships and I. I knew myself. I saw that alcohol was just it doesn’t bring out the best in people, at least my experiences.
[00:11:04] Salwa Yeah, absolutely.
[00:11:05] Chang And people can have a good time. But whenever I drank alcohol, it was like poison.
[00:11:10] Salwa It literally is poison.
[00:11:12] Chang So and in the off season when I was training, I would smoke some pot because it seemed to agree with me and my body.
[00:11:19] Salwa What was your sport?
[00:11:20] Chang In high school, I played baseball and football and I was fortunate enough to get a football scholarship to St Mary’s College up in the Bay Area. So I graduated high school ’91 graduated college ’95. Coming out of college. Didn’t want to work for somebody else. So I started a small publication. I would say it was called Industry Insider. It was a one sheet of paper and I started a 976 club line, which was a phone call to find out where all the clubs were in LA, because I was like, Man, people like want to go to these clubs. You can’t get all these fliers. That was when you had map points and stuff like that. I was like, Why can’t you just call a line in? Like, find out what clubs are going on that night? So many trials and tribulations. Check that sheet of paper, 116 pages and 135,000 copies in one year.
[00:12:12] Salwa I think that that is so profound and so beautiful because. No, it’s true. Because it’s like the ingenuity of, hey, I’m in this space. I see a hole. I want it to be simpler for me. Therefore, I am going to make it easy for other people who are like me. That thinking in and of itself, I think is like where a lot of young entrepreneurs, if they can apply that thought process, can actually get ahead.
[00:12:38] Chang Yeah, I mean, I think there’s a duty, right? Like it can be selfish. It’s all right to look out for yourself and your family. But I was always around teen sports and I’m a big team player, so there’s nothing that I could have accomplished by myself. I was able to get those friends and family who are closest to me to support me through my crazy endeavors. I was blessed. I come from a single parent home. My mother is a war bride from Taiwan. She’s very much a tiger Asian mom. And you know, her whole thing, my whole life was, you’re going to go to school, you’re going to graduate with a college degree and you’re going to go get a good job. So my hero is my mom. Her name is on my back. And I think every time I go into a meeting with anybody that I do business with that I am in there. My mom’s sitting right next to me. So, I mean, that’s really my thought. And I didn’t start by wanting to be the flag bearer for cannabis. When I got into business and I was doing the magazine, I knew that I needed to promote my magazine. And fortunately for me, B-real from Cypress Hill took a liking to my magazine. He actually wanted to write for it. Come to find out later. He came over to my house one day to turn in his article and he was like, Yo, James Evans, because he came into my house. He goes, You’re the little shit, brother James. Brother Chang Oh my God, How come you didn’t tell me? I wanted you to like the magazine for the magazine. I wanted to tell you I was James’s little brother doing a magazine. He goes mad Respect. So, like, a couple of weeks later, he brought me out on the road during the Smoking Grooves tour, and that’s when I fell in love with live music. And I was like, Yo, why don’t you guys have your own show? I mean, Ozzy has Ozzfest, the Beastie Boys have the Freedom Festival. Cypress needs to have their event. And that was when Cypress War was coming out and that’s when the Cypress Hill smoke out was created. So I was really trying to just promote my magazine and get behind B-real. And if you if you’re going to support B-real and Cypress Hill, you’re going to promote cannabis. And so that was the start of it.
[00:14:44] Salwa Absolutely. Gosh, you just unpacked so much stuff. I want to kind of dig into some of the things that you said along the way, just because I want to take this opportunity to learn too. So I’m definitely a cannabis girl through and through that happened to hop into production and music festivals and that type of a thing. But from your standpoint, because being a cannabis person, production means something totally different for me than it does to somebody who’s in the festival industry. What does production mean for a music festival and what’s the difference between production and promotion?
[00:15:18] Chang Okay, well, I mean, generally speaking, production can be broken down into technical production, like stage sound in lights. And then I break down a festival between two types of production, the technical production, which is the stage sound in lights and then what I would call like site ops, fencing, power distribution, waste management, food operations, site ops, technical production. That would be my two ways of communicating with people in the music industry about my production concerns. Right? And then you can get into artists, writers specifically, or if you want, you know, if. We’re talking especially about cannabis and bringing cannabis into a live music space requires a different set of skill sets, mostly permitting, and then some site ops, security, police, stuff like that, because you’re bringing in your distribution and retail essentially.
[00:16:18] Salwa Absolutely. For those that are kind of new to this, so the state of California has their own special set of rules. So even if you have a successful, amazing festival and you’re trying to just have cannabis be incorporated in it, you have to have all these site OP, to borrow a phrase, site operations that will check the box on the state level that make you compliant and then push your whole festival through from a compliance standpoint. But tell me about why does cannabis and music go so well together? Why are they like these romantic partners such as love each other?
[00:16:56] Chang Several factors, right? I mean, I think when people are going to a concert, you’re going to kind of hopefully get away from everyday life a little bit. You’re going to celebrate or, you know, music is so personal. There’s just art. I think I can answer the cannabis portion by just discussing why live music is important. Music has a tendency, I think, especially when you’re in your teenager years, you know, seventh, eighth grade people end up defining themselves. You know, people are looking for their identities. And the number one way I think a teenager is going to find their identity. One is going to be clothing, two is going to be music. Right. Because what I wear, like I remember being a young man and when I especially sports was my whole life when I was younger and I would define myself maybe by the cleats or the shoes that I wore, like I wanted to be like Michael Jordan or I wanted to be like Steve Garvey. So, like, whatever, you know, I think a lot of kids want to be like Kobe or LeBron. So we’re into the shoes, right? That’s one part of the thing for sure. Music. Music has a way when you’re in your teenager years to really speak to you different than your parents or teachers speak to you. So as you start finding yourself and enjoying music, you start defining yourself. Right now, the lifestyle comes in, right? Because as you get a little bit older, hopefully you’re experimenting. You might be smoking cigarettes, you might be trying alcohol, you might try cannabis, right? These are all things that young adults might have exposure to, you know, and I was always the kid that didn’t drink. So I was the kind of the nerdy athlete. And then smoking was a whole nother level, right? If you were in this, like, alcohol seems to be so widely accepted. But, you know, at least when I was going to school, there were some pot smokers. But and there’s a negative connotation to pot smoking, definitely. Like if you get caught drinking and you’re on the football team, you’re probably going to get into a little bit of trouble, reprimanded or whatever. But if you’re caught smoking weed, you’re kicked out, you are eliminated, you are shamed. That is just say, no, I grew up in the just say no years. So I think that cannabis, especially for younger people maybe going into college, it is such an amazing plant and flower and experience that it spoke to me that I felt like I naturally feel like I’m a little fast. I don’t think I was ever clinically diagnosed with ADD, but I’m pretty quick when I speak and when I talk and when I think sometimes I speak and think at the same time. So it might be Tourette’s or something, but I found that cannabis was the perfect substance for me to recreate with or to create with because I would notice that beats with just the pocket would align the music would align it with the visuals. Just the feeling of the general high that I would get was just one with who I was. And I think cannabis, more so than almost any other substance in the world, speaks to your body’s functions, like a speed or an internal metronome, and that metronome just speaks to music. So cannabis and music seem to have that perfect collision. Because I will tell you this, and enjoying the Cypress Hill Smoke Out Cypress being a band. There’s a hip hop band, a Latin hip hop band, a band that can be considered a rock band, a band that has respect in the dance scene. It was world music and being able to be in the penumbra of Cypress Hill and experiencing and promoting Cypress Hill and to know that Cypress is message and their music spoke to hip hoppers, to rockers, to ravers, to cannabis users. Non cannabis users was so unique because no matter where I went, there was always that one person that was with the cannabis movement inside a circle of people that had influence and that was always attracted to that, you know, that it wasn’t just one type of people that smoked or listened to music. It was always bringing people together. And that’s a big theme for cannabis music. And I think both of our plates are amazing.
[00:21:32] Salwa I love that so much. And you know, it’s funny because I just did an episode recently where we’re talking about I’ve owned retail, like that’s been my thing. And I just the thing that I love the most about retail, which, you know, you’re going to have first hand experience and I can’t wait to dive into what you’re building. But the walks of life, the different walks of life that come into a dispensary you’ll never meet in your regular life, right? Like there are people all across the board. But it’s such a beautiful thing because when you’re interacting on the dispensary floor, everyone usually has a smile on their face. They want to talk about cannabis and you have that thing in common and all of the sudden you’re having these like deeper relationships and connections and conversations off the bat with a perfect stranger because you’re bonding over this flower.
[00:22:21] Chang Over cannabis and it’s so personal. There’s so many people that carry shame still. They live in the shadows. I mean, I got to give it up to Steve D’Angelo, who said that, Chang, we are taking people out of the shadows and into the light. And I didn’t really think about that until I thought about myself, my own shame, because I was ashamed of smoking pot for a long time. I had to be I was just people who didn’t accept it. I was being judged by family members and friends and that’s just the general population. And imagine these people, these customers who walk into your store, they are letting down their shame and opening up and talking to you about what they desire and what they like out of cannabis, because you’re trying to to make sure that you provide them with the the flower, the tincture, the vape, the edible, whatever it is, that experience. There are so many different experiences and all these people just out of the blue can drop all of that baggage and share with you. That’s awesome.
[00:23:20] Salwa Absolutely. And it’s so interesting to like the range. And when we’re talking about people who are coming in because they might feel some type of way or shame or whatever, what I’ve experienced plenty of times is that there are people who are coming to you because modern medicine has failed them and they’ve heard about cannabis. And this is kind of their last ditch effort to find relief, right? And so it’s our responsibility to make sure not only do they have a good experience in our store, but the Bud tender is actually guiding them to a product that is suitable for their needs because if you overshoot the mark, they might have a bad experience. Or if you undershoot the mark, it’s like, Oh, it doesn’t really provide relief. So it’s such a huge responsibility that the retailers have.
[00:24:07] Chang That last mile, the bud tenders, they’re the ones that are speaking, getting the feedback from the customers and ultimately making recommendations. And I always say it doesn’t have to be so serious to the medical level, right. Because like, you know, you would think if I had an ailment and modern medicine was failing me and my only hope is left in walking into your shop. Wow, that’s a very extreme situation in someone’s life. But I will say this just for the average person that wants to recreate with cannabis, right, Because maybe alcohol is too strong, maybe sugar and caffeine is too crazy. Maybe cannabis just makes them feel better or makes people create better, or maybe, you know, just makes them feel better, Right? That’s what we want. We want to feel.
[00:24:57] Salwa That, ah, we can.
[00:24:58] Chang Recreate meaning. It’s okay. It’s okay to want to go out and loosen up a little bit. Or like some people I. I hear people tell me this, too. You know, when I drink, I’ll talk a little bit more. I’ll be a little bit more outgoing. It’s one. I haven’t heard that a whole lot with cannabis, you know, but I’ve seen it because I don’t. I’m always interested in if people can recognize it’s a little embarrassing, right? I am surrounded by some of the heaviest smokers on the face of the planet that love indica. Right. And I’m such a sativa guy. I prefer a sativa, a light, airy smoke, a tanduay. And my day is awesome, you know, And I haven’t even had tanduay the day. But generally speaking, like, that’s my thing. That’s what I like it. Sometimes it’s a little hard for me to admit that to the crews that are around me, although everyone accepts me for who I am, thank God, because other reasons. But nonetheless, people don’t have to have a medical issue to want to recreate with cannabis. I always say, like I’m hopeful that people will come to us to just improve their life in any way, shape or form. I want there’s positivity, but.
[00:26:08] Salwa Chang, I’m going to push back on that. Since you brought up Steve D’Angelo, he would often say that it is all medical, that there’s actually in fact no recreational, and that just feeling good in a social setting can be defined as medical wanting to smoke.
[00:26:26] Chang I think that’s a great perspective. I agree with that. You can make that argument that, you know, you’re constantly medicating and it’s a part of your wellness. The same way I workout, I try to eat healthy. I as smoking, is a part of my wellness program. Yeah, Steve D’Angelo would say, Chang, you’re not getting high. You’re getting well. Which consciously I’m good with. But I also got dudes and girls around me that just want to get blasted like a fool. To just go to another planet, fall asleep. I don’t know what it is. I don’t feel like, you know, I’m a little perturbed that maybe consumers think that the higher THC levels that are so prevalent in the stores means that the cannabis flowers better or strong. I don’t know. I believe there’s an entourage effect between terpenes THC and a number of other compounds that will affect everybody differently. Because I will say, generally speaking, everyone’s chemistry is different. But I agree with you. I agree with Steve. That is more my perspective. But there’s that crew of people and that segment of the society that is using cannabis in a way that is maybe a little bit not the way that we would like to use it. Maybe they’re abusing it. Maybe their want and goal or needs from cannabis don’t align with what me, you and Steve were thinking because maybe they’re trying to escape something. I don’t know why you would want to maybe take or eat so many edibles, smoked so much weed when you know that there is a point where it’s too much, too much for me, too much for the average person, but they’re smoking for some reason that’s beyond their goal. That’s all I’m saying.
[00:28:16] Salwa Sure, sure, sure.
[00:28:18] Chang Do you think we have some of this out there? I know. And everyone’s tolerance is different.
[00:28:23] Salwa So everyone’s tolerance is different. And, you know, like, life is tough, man. Like, this shit is rough. Like being an adult in 2023 has its challenges, right? It’s like a constant thing. And, you know, if you’re using cannabis to, like, escape your reality for a little bit of all the things that you could do to escape your reality, this one’s not bad, so I’ll leave that one at that. We’ll leave it at that, Yes. Okay. So talk to me about New Generation. Talk to me about what you’re building.
[00:28:56] Chang This is great. I don’t know, maybe five or six years ago, I met this really interesting person named Justin Shively. He is the owner and operator of New Generation. I will say this. We were at a Cannabis Cup and my good friend Pat asked me to help him promote at the show. So I was putting together some promos and one of my good friends at the time had a brand called Jet Fuel, which was a very high end indica strain that my friend B-real was smoking and my friend and this was smoking. I was very proud. I thought I went to Cannabis Cup. I thought I invented the best job in cannabis. Okay.
[00:29:34] Salwa I remember that.
[00:29:35] Chang That this jet fuel jar now I’ll put it out there. I put it, I put it up there. Were they? I was so proud of this jar. And then Pat had a couple of different partners inside his booth. And one of those partners was Justin Shively. And he looked at my little jar and my high end flower, and he goes, Bro, it’s just flower. It’s just flower. It’s going to go up in flame. I got to say, we didn’t really hit it off. Well, you know, I was like. Why? You know, like, no, this is luxury. We don’t. You understand? It’s like luxury. Luxury, bro. It’s just it is good weed I love that. It’s awesome. Oh. Fancy jar or not. You know, it’s always going to be about the best weed at the lowest price, my friend. You know, I was. I was like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We didn’t hit it off well, I didn’t like that. But getting through the whole weekend, I got to really know just in a couple of weeks goes by and he invites me down to his store. So I go to Santa Ana, to the new generation, because Santa Ana had just opened up their licenses. And he’s like, Come on down and see my shop. And so I went to go see his shop. And I loved everything about his shop, the concrete countertops, because he was big on like, Look, no one can take this from us. Chang, I am not going to get raided. And he was the first and to this day, maybe the only person that I know that came from the traditional side of the business went legal and went completely legal, which made me a little bit nervous to this day, if you ask me. The most successful people in cannabis are those that came from the traditional business and are working in the legal business and might be doing both, you know, and that’s just a sad state of affairs. But that’s that’s the truth and just.
[00:31:21] Salwa The failure of our current system.
[00:31:23] Chang The failure of the current system. There you go. But my friend Justin, the guy that I did not like, the guy that told me, Sure, you’re going to stop all your traditional business. No, he did. I watched I mean, I saw that he was, over time, one of the better operators, and he asked me to come work with him. He said, Chang. I’d really like to work with you. I think you’d be awesome in in in the legal cannabis business. So I basically took a consulting position with Justin three years from like a couple of weeks ago today he asked me if I knew anybody in Pomona and I had my guerrilla union offices and we were in Pomona, and I know a lot of people. He’s like, you know, Pomona is going to open up to licensing, Chang I’d really like to offer you this opportunity, and you could be a license holder. I think you need to be a license holder. Chang I said, bro, I’m trying with all these events. He goes, No, no, you need brick and mortar. You need to understand this. You need to do this. So I jumped on board with Justin, and in a couple of weeks it’s taken almost three years from the first city meeting through all of the city meetings, the council meetings, the various changes to what the council finally approved going through a process. I think hundreds of people applied. I know my partner B-real from Doctor Green Thumb cookies, Dizzy there. All the big guys were in there. They only gave away four licenses, two retails, two multis. So Dizzy and Catalyst, one of the retailers, Chang and Justin and his group one, one of The Maltese. And then I think Ash won the other multi. So the two retail businesses, Catalyst, Stizzy in Pomona, are the highest grossing stores in the state currently.
[00:33:06] Salwa Amazing.
[00:33:07] Chang God bless their souls, I think.
[00:33:08] Salwa Well, they’ve got some competition coming, right?
[00:33:11] Chang We definitely do. We want a little bit of competition coming from us. But I will say this unlike Santa Ana, who has 27 licenses currently, Costa mesa is going to have 40 something. It’s unlimited. L.A. is virtually unlimited. When you go in all the the deliveries. The nearest licensed to Pomona is 30 minutes in each direction, 30 minutes west to L.A., 30 minutes south to Santa Ana or 30 minutes east to San Bernardino. So we’re a commuter town. And I believe, you know, I had a dream. I would like to be able to wake up, ride my bike to my grow and my shop. That’s pretty awesome. And more importantly for me, it’s all the services that I can provide through the most difficult license, which is a distro license. So if you get into branding, co packaging, sourcing, storage, all of the things that I think we’re going to be really great at because we have a lot of space and we didn’t build out the entire grow. The grow can be built out if and when cannabis price goes back up or I can just do a really good job marketing all the brands and learning everything that I need to learn so that I can help all of my future events be more successful.
[00:34:31] Salwa Absolutely.
[00:34:32] Chang That great retail experience in your store translates so well to what needs to be happen at an event.
[00:34:39] Salwa Absolutely. And to touch on two things there. One is, in order to have an event license, the state makes the event license holder responsible for everything that happens in that event. So if you have multiple retailers and one doesn’t do the inventory properly and they come in and check, guess who’s in trouble, it’s the event license holder is.
[00:35:03] Chang And is in trouble.
[00:35:04] Salwa It’s wild. And if you get that event license taken away, it hinders your ability to have any other type of license. So the responsibility on an event license holder is vast. But and this is the way Chang did it and this is the way I did it. Once you have retail, once you have distribution, once you have your own licenses, you can use your own licenses to facilitate these functions of an event giving you more control. So that way you’re not relying on other people to do the right thing and jeopardizing your future ability to do business.
[00:35:40] Chang Boy, did you just say a whole lot there. If anybody is watching this particular podcast that last 30 seconds is priceless. Right. Being vertical in the business is the business. I tell people all the time, if you don’t have a real estate play in cannabis, get out, because the person that’s going to win is going to be the landlord.
[00:36:03] Salwa Dude. Can I tell you something? Yep. Talk to me. Sure. That is the realest thing ever. And I, like, done a couple episodes, but I don’t think I really hammered the point home for me. So, you know, obviously, California is in this huge market decline and for those of us who had vast operations throughout the state, we’ve had to shut a lot of things down to figure out like what pencils. So in that decline, the thing that saved my house and saved my businesses was 100% my real estate portfolio. And the reason that made sense for me and for those of you who are starting out, you can have your retail license under one company, but do an option to buy your real estate under a different company. So it gives you more control for banks and lending and having different corporate structures. Because if your retail gets in trouble, you can sell your real estate asset or borrow against your real estate asset without hurting your cannabis business.
[00:37:06] Chang Woo. Amen. amen to that.
[00:37:08] Salwa So if and when you’re making money squirreled away in real estate, at least that’s what saved me. And that’s the advice I would give.
[00:37:15] Chang Corporate structure Get with a very good attorney that understands various forms of LLC. Z Corp. S Corp says reasons for all of it. But definitely if you just kind of look generally at the cannabis business, oftentimes many people who want to get into cannabis, it’s a very expensive proposition because you’ve got to go through licensing, you’ve got to secure a location and oftentimes you can’t afford the location right as it is. You can’t buy the property and you’re going to get into an agreement with that landowner who will realize the value and try to charge you because you’re in the green business, a ridiculous amount of rent, which is all your profit. You know, you find yourself really working for your landlord.
[00:38:00] Salwa And that’s very true because typically for those who are new to the industry, the landlord will justify it by saying that they have their mortgage or their loan through a traditional bank and that because their tenant is a cannabis company, it’s jeopardizing their ability to get lending and they’ll use it as an excuse to charge you way above market. But in this day, an era of where we are with commercial real estate on a decline and with access to banking through credit unions in these things, cannabis companies have more power today to negotiate that rent and negotiate it down more so than they ever have. So please, like, as Chang said, get a lawyer. Understand your corporate structure. Get a real estate professional to advocate for you to get either at market or even try to go below market rent.
[00:38:57] Chang Agreed. I mean, and then if you are vertical and you have a distro and you grow and you have a retail, the next logical or maybe one of the logical things would be an event license and then you would have your own vertical at your event and that.
[00:39:14] Salwa So it’s like that’s going to be a labor of love with.
[00:39:17] Chang State and local jurisdictions. Obviously didn’t speak to a promoter first when they built their rules. I would be a bigger advocate not for an event license, but more for a concessionaires license. Yes, I’d love the concessionaires license if we follow alcohol and what alcohol does, right. If I want to bring alcohol to an event at a park, I might need a concessionaires license, you know?
[00:39:43] Salwa Yes.
[00:39:44] Chang I don’t think I need an event license if I just want to have a small event in a barbershop or if I want to do a private party, something smaller, whether it’s on private or public land, I think a concessionaires license would be the easiest way for the state to regulate and get its tax. But it’s not up to me. But I fortunately, I do have a little bit of influence. People do ask questions all the time and. I think that’s what’s really important about what I’m doing or what you’re doing. We do have influence in the projects and events that we’ve been a part of. We have databases. We have a network of people.
[00:40:22] Salwa Pitching that’s so important. I think like one of the things that a message I’d like to send to you is you are such a good leader and you have such a broad network and you come from a different industry first and then came into this industry. And I think for us in this industry, it’s like a cry for help of like saying, Hey, we need you, we need your leadership, and we need to start like gathering these cannabis voices into a funnel to be louder and be more succinct on what our asks are. So, yeah, I know you’re building your businesses and you’re doing your stuff, but like, please lead us to the promised land because you’re absolutely right, this doesn’t work.
[00:41:06] Chang I’d say almost every project that I’m working on is a case study for the future generation to take something from and go further. I’m not giving up by any chance. I believe, you know. Hey, I’m approaching O.G. status, and the best of what I have to give to the world is still in front of me, not behind me. Very excited about the projects that I’m working on and the people that I’m working on them with. I am super blessed. I do feel that responsibility. I 100% every day wake up like today is worth 10 million bucks. I got to make the most of every minute, right? So I do I try my best to mentor and give other people opportunities. I often try to gather people, bring people together. I think that naturally, one of the things that I did in my previous business, whether it was when I was publishing a magazine or promoting shows, I had a tendency to reunite bands and do things like that, which is very difficult, right? Like the average fan probably thinks like, Oh, it’s probably easy. Just like, think of a band and then you offer them money and they come play, it doesn’t work that way, you know, is very difficult to engineer the projects that we we’ve that we’ve been blessed to be a part of, whether that’s getting a band back together or getting like Snoop to do doggy style, getting Nas to do Illmatic, reuniting the Far Side or, or working with Rihanna and Travis Scott and Kendrick Lamar in Nickerson Gardens, which is the second largest housing project west of the Mississippi. All those things.
[00:42:45] Salwa You know, I was just daydreaming, as you were saying that, like, how cool would it be if the industry created an event? Not crazy, just like a little of that, where the sole purpose of the event was for cannabis business owners to give presentations to elected officials and city employees? Let’s say it’s like in San Francisco or in L.A. it’s invite only. You have to be in city government or public office or something like that where you’re shaping legislation and order like that is the audience. And then we create structured programs around having them really understand the business.
[00:43:22] Chang I agree. I think there have been certain events out there that have brought the stakeholders together. I mean, you know, whether it be the DCC or you’re just sometimes you just need to start with your local board, you know, the council because it the state is set. The state has like will pretty much approve almost any license that can make it through the local jurisdiction first.
[00:43:46] Salwa You’re just talking about events, but like think about life. So now what you’re going to experience as you see the entire supply chain clicking together? Yep. That certain parts of it have unfair amount of responsibilities, whether it be collecting the taxes for everybody or it’s like we talked about with the events where if somebody fucks up like you’re in jeopardy, like, so you’re going to start seeing how they, like, interact with each other and play with each other. But anyway, I mean.
[00:44:17] Chang I think in that a lot of that’s going to come down to compliance and enforcement, too, right, Because. It is like a death penalty for for for like making a mistake at an event that could affect your retail license. That is a brick and mortar versus your event endeavors, you know, separating those two.
[00:44:37] Salwa Absolutely. But also, like I mean, so I just we’ll get to Emerald Cup. But I was just at Emerald Cup. I moderated a panel for the DCC and, you know, and I asked this question forward, sideways, whatever. And you know what? The one thing that really struck home for me was we have the ability to have change with the DCC within certain limitations, like not necessarily tax rate, but we can affect the licensing fees and stuff like that simply by actually commenting during the open comment periods. But the problem is, is that the DCC doesn’t communicate with us in a manner we understand they’re not on Instagram, they’re not like really promoting these periods of open public comment. So if we have leadership in our industry, it’s like, Hey, you guys, open public comment, everybody send the same email. The licensing fees are too high. We want a reduction in licensing fees. That’s something the whole industry could get behind. And during these you’re right, now is the time to take us seriously. Right.
[00:45:41] Chang Salwa, you know when these things are happening, if you let me know, we might let other people know. And that’s the way that’s worked. You know.
[00:45:49] Salwa I know, I know. I think, like, I’m starting to realize that, like, you know, you have to be the change you want to see, Right? So, okay, that being said, I want to get to High Hopes. Will you please like I haven’t had a chance to go to High Hopes. I want to go to High Hopes. Walk us through with an event is like, what was that? Where did that creation come from?
[00:46:10] Chang I needed to do something that was Chiang’s right. I’ve been so good. I love Cypress Hill and I love Mirrors, and I love all the artists that I’ve ever worked with. Right. But High Hopes had to be Chang’s platform, meaning it had to be positive. It had to be. It had it had to include the industry. So the first event that we did was a concert where you got in if you brought your resume. You know, so I thought, there’s so much that needs to be done. If I just take lead on this and I was really trying to think of a platform, I had so many platforms, you know, like people know guerilla union as our promotional company or they know the smoke out or they knew Rock the Bells, but I needed to have a platform. That was Chang’s platform. I often, like you said, I have to walk into a room and identify who you’re speaking to, right? I have dozens of companies. I mean, probably more than most people would probably want to admit to a business. But it it’s important, right? You have to say, this is who I am. This is who I’m representing. And so I needed to have a platform that was Chang I’m not representing Cypress. Cypress supports high hopes. A lot of other entities support me, thankfully. But I just wanted to say, hey, listen, this is something that I’m going to use to try to bring a positive impact to the cannabis industry and to the consumers both. So the very first event that we did was a multiday event. Day one was a concert and a job fair. So I worked with about 40 or 50 companies and got them all to show up. And we had thousands of people that wanted to watch Ghostface and Redman and B-real and Bam Marley for free. All they had to do is bring their resume and submit it to one of the companies. That was day one. And we also did Expungement, which is an unbelievable thing by the way.
[00:48:14] Salwa Wow.
[00:48:16] Chang To see that people who have a strike or some kind of mark on their on their docket, that really only takes an attorney to take 2 minutes to go into and expunge. I was like, blown away. You can do this just with an Internet connection and an attorney on site, you know. So we took care of expunging people’s records. I think we did dozens of them that day so they could get jobs. They could, you know, do that, get an apartment. There are people that are prevented from some of the most basic life functions because. They were doing the things that me and you do. So I’m just going to keep a straight up like, Yo, I got I had a an eighth of wheat on me and they gave me a citation, you know, And the state, the state of California could expunge everybody with one button, low lying offenders. Let’s wipe those out so you guys can go get jobs and credits and an apartment. Nope. This state wants to incarcerate people. Maybe still so. I don’t know. But that was our day.
[00:49:23] Salwa That’s like God’s work right there. I’m so, like, I just need to take a moment and honor that you did that. That’s huge. Thank you for. Thank you for that. That’s a really big deal.
[00:49:36] Chang I’m thankful to be in that position to do those things right. Like, why can’t everybody do that? Anybody who’s thinking about doing a cannabis event, you want to do an activation that actually makes a difference for your brand, work with a local attorney and do a free expungement clinic from your favorite shop. That would be amazing, right? That doesn’t cost a lot.
[00:49:59] Salwa I might do that myself.
[00:50:01] Chang Attorney’s that will do that for free. They just they don’t have the capacity to organize an event to get dozens of people to come to them to to expunge their records for free. So that was one right job fair. And all of the brands were just blown away. They got quality applicants, people who had by the way, the cannabis industry is stronger than ever. You’ve got educated people. You’ve got experienced people now, right? You got people that have real resumes on. Indeed, you know, you got to qualify people. People got to still do the work. You can’t just be in cannabis and teach your way through cannabis. Cannabis is way too difficult. You know, cream will rise to the top fast. So, you know, I that event, that high hopes event, that was day one. Day two was more of an industry event where I think we pulled off probably a couple dozen panels in the Biltmore Hotel, and I recorded all of the panels. They were all amazing panels. And that was year one of high hopes. It was a job fair and a expungement clinic and a conference. Then it evolved. I also have High Hopes Concert series. So just this last November, Ice Cube, Cypress Hill, Bone, Thugs in Harmony, Redman and Method Man, Warren G. And a number of other acts. We were able to sell out the Ontario arena and have a great concert. There will be more concerts, and at these concerts I do data grabs. I do have everyone’s information, so my concert goers often become my biggest protesters or my biggest supporters are advocates for the various projects. So and then I’ve also just done High Hope Mixers, which are smaller industry parties where I just invite all my friends out because they need a place to get together after a long day busting their ass at a trade show. And they often say, Chang, what are you doing? Because I know if you’re throwing a party, the right people are going to be there or whatever. So I’m always happy to be a mechanism of encouragement, positivity, education, networking, and that’s really my whole story with high hopes. So it’ll come in a lot of different forms. I’ve also even produced High Hopes product, I’ve done collab product. I had to. I said, if I’m going to be in cannabis, Salwa, and this started many years ago, and to the shame of my entire family, I started growing because I was like, There’s no way I am going to get into the cannabis business unless I know how to grow. And so I taught myself how to grow cannabis. Over 2 to 3 years, I learned how to source cannabis. I, I became an employee of a distro. I learned how to source when the market went wet. You remember when COVID hit and cannabis became like a essential business? Well, that’s when the music business and hospitality business went through. And I was like, Oh my God, I have time to do something that I probably never thought I’d be able to do, but I’m going to do it. I got in my car and I went up and down the state and just introduced myself to every grower that had a legal license because I wanted to know where, what, how to do it. Right. So. Literally. I had never really sold cannabis before and wanted to get into sourcing and I wanted to meet indoor growers, outdoor growers mix like growers, like DEP growers. I wanted to meet everybody up in the Emerald Triangle. I wanted to meet anybody that had a project just because I wanted to understand the landscape. And I believe it starts with our cultivators, and that is when the cultivation license appeared to be the most valuable license in cannabis. So I did. I got in my car. I think we put 90,000 miles on my car in eight months, and I sold $10,000,000. I transacted $10 million of cannabis in eight months. Sourcing the brands, sourcing for people that needed trim and good quality flower to go into their their concentrates. I mean, I just learned all that from the rooter to the tooter. That plant is shouldn’t used like every all of it like every little bit of it and some of it could go and become paper or fabric. Some of it you know like there’s no need to waste cannabis even if it doesn’t turn out the way that you want it to, there is a place for it to go, you know.
[00:54:39] Salwa Rooter to the tooter!
[00:54:41] Chang So I was like, Wow. And that really taught me how to kind of grade flower because I didn’t know how people were judging flower. Why would someone pay X number of dollars? And then, you know, for for flower or why somebody else did it. And you learn that there are people that just have their own systems for grading flower, but most people are going to touch it, smell it, and then smoke it. Those are the three things I say. If you want to be in flower business, you’ve got to understand shipping profiles. You got to understand your customers, right Salwa?
[00:55:15] Salwa Yeah. Hey, man, it’s food, sex and weed. The only thing that satisfies all the senses. So you’ve got a lot to unpack there.
[00:55:25] Chang You do. You really do. And so those relationships to this day are super valuable to me. I appreciated that. It was a good experience. I let farmers know and like, do be truthful. People just wanted someone they could trust. Farmers don’t know who to trust when there are buyers, right? Like, you know, there’s there’s the traditional business out there and there’s the regulated business. So Chang was representing the regulated business going in. All metric handshakes, right? Learning how to quarantine and test flour because, you know, you got to buy you can buy a you can test up to 50 lbs. Right. But who buys 50 lbs of flour? You know, it’s it’s tough. Big brands do people who are manufacturing do. But an average store is not going to do that. Like, who are the customers and who are the brands? And so the brands really stem from the product. You’re going to have brands that are based on that premium brand indoor flower. You’re going to have a lot of mix, like there were a lot of mixed light licenses, sun grown flowers, Fantastic. Still got the best profiles. If the sun is on it, I don’t care what anybody says. Indoor flower, more power, outdoor sun, more flavor. You know, typically speaking in my book, from what I’ve seen and being a judge like last year, 80% of the flower that was submitted were cakes. It wasn’t even exotic anymore. You know, these are all these Flavors. This year, I see a big downturn in mixed light. And I was told that 60% of licenses haven’t renewed on some of these.
[00:57:03] Salwa And I’m one of them.
[00:57:04] Chang Right. For cultivation. Why? Why, why grow when you’re losing money?
[00:57:06] Salwa We had six acres, six acre greenhouse in Los Alamos that we turned off because it just doesn’t like the regulations in Santa Barbara County. I think Santa Barbara County overshot the mark and like I said, that they kind of fucked up and so now are just holding the line with nonsense regulations, hoping that most people kind of fall off so they can like, regulate.
[00:57:31] Chang It’s so scary. I tell people like, I’m. It’s still possible. It’s not realistic, but it’s still possible that whoever our next president is could say, Hey, you know what, Schedule two, I gave you guys all a chance and you guys really messed up. You guys haven’t figured it out. So I’m going to give it to Big Pharma.
[00:57:51] Salwa That’s all that worries me.
[00:57:54] Chang It really scares me because it’s still possible. And I go, Oh, no way.
[00:57:57] Salwa I mean, look, Chang, like you see what’s happening with the hemp bill in Florida, right? Like it looks like industry infighting, right? With what’s happening over there, it’s not it’s pharma. It’s pharma disguised as cannabis trying to kill the hemp industry. And it’s it’s really unfortunate. Which is another is I’ve been on this trip lately of like we just need better leadership. We absolutely need better leadership. And like all the industry associations have failed us. Everything that we’ve tried to get behind has failed us. And there is nobody who’s willing to like, really rally everybody to have a consistent voice. There’s nobody that’s like trusted enough at this point, like we try to trust NCIA, we try to trust California Industry Association. ASA seems to have lost its power, NPP has lost its power. Like all of these things, normal all these things. And it’s just it’s unfortunate because it’s like we’re getting kind of picked off.
[00:58:52] Chang I think people, too, are a little lazy, you know, in cannabis, people don’t realize you’re still in prohibition because everyone thinks it’s legalized. Your good life is great, everything’s going to be okay. They said, No, we’re still in prohibition. We still have a fight. We still have to go and get banking. We still have to go and and make it so that it’s okay to consume in certain areas.
[00:59:18] Salwa Or that these rules actually make sense.
[00:59:22] Chang All the way around. I mean, like and that’s that’s not just in the cannabis business though, because you could turn on the news and we need better leadership. We need better leadership in government, we need better leadership locally, we need better leadership in our schools. And leadership is, is is who it’s it’s your parents, it’s your coaches. It’s it’s all of it. We need to be better people. I don’t know what it is in this world, but I could just I turn on the news and it’s very it’s sad but I’m watching the news because I want to know if a tactical nuclear weapon is going to be used in Europe. I want to know what the hell is really going on. Why is China so pissed off that Taiwan is, you know, visiting the United States? I mean, I understand these things and all of these problems, but these are big problems. Like, you know, just. You know, I was talking to my wife five years ago. I went to Washington, D.C. with my then young son to fight gun rights. You know, like why do we need an automatic weapon, I believe. Hey, the Second Amendment was written a long time ago. It’s true. We should have the right. The Second Amendment was actually built that right to have arms was so that the average citizen could rise up against the government in the event that the government was not doing what it was supposed to do. We got to say that when they wrote it, the Second Amendment was for citizens to be able to rise up against the government. There is nothing that we’re going to rise up against a tank, a missile or a battleship right now. Okay. So let’s just like I don’t I think everyone has a right to a gun, but maybe better checks and balances. Maybe a mental health check needs to happen before giving someone a license to kill.
[01:01:08] Salwa That’s so unfortunate.
[01:01:11] Chang It’s very hard. I don’t want to even. But those are all those problems, right? Like we’re raising children, Sawa. I always thought that I would leave the kids in a better place than than what we had. But. It’s not looking that way. We definitely.
[01:01:26] Salwa Are looking that way.
[01:01:27] Chang Because of social media. And I’ll say this because, you know, we’re on a podcast, you know, I’ve never participated in social media. I never had a MySpace page. I don’t I never participated with Facebook. I know my businesses have. Right. Chang Weisberg never wanted to participate in social media. I mean, I asked myself right away if anybody ever read their MySpace, like the information that you got to approve or give them, you have to give them your all of your habits online, your searches, sometimes your contact database.
[01:02:04] Salwa That’s the beef with Tik Tok right now, right? Like, yes, it is. You have the app on your phone and accesses your entire phone, which honestly is like such a distraction at this point.
[01:02:13] Chang Is So that’s the world. The world social media is not good. I think it’s a big responsibility and kids need to learn how to deal with that responsibility before just, just participating blindly, you know? Yeah.
[01:02:27] Salwa Yeah.
[01:02:28] Chang I think there’s a lot of good there’s a lot of good that can come from technology and there’s a lot of bad. And I think there’s a letter going around about A.I. right now, you know, that Wozniak and Elon Musk. They’re like, Yo, we better put a 30 day hold or a six month hold on all development because there’s going to be a whole nation of people that you think’s a nation of people. But it’s just bots, man. These aren’t going to be, but they’re going to look like your family members. They’re going to act like your friends. And that kind of information.
[01:03:01] Salwa I just had to have this conversation with my elderly mom and I was like, all, Hey, mom, if you get a voicemail or even a video of one of your kids asking you for money, hang up the phone and just call us. Because right now the scam is if you’re online at all, in any way, shape or form, they could take your likeness, they could take your voice, and they could just mimic it to say anything. So unfortunately, the coming scams are like, you know, grandparents hearing from their grandchildren, Oh, no, I’m in trouble, blah, blah, blah. Like, send me money. And they’re seeing their face, they’re hearing their voice. And so they’re like, okay, anything for you? But it’s like that’s it’s like I’m sitting here. I mean, I have this conversation with my mom.
[01:03:43] Chang I mean, L.A. City on a Freedom of Information Act, just released all the photos of all of their officers, their undercover officers, to a public website. Right. AI think about what you just said about your parents, but what if it was the person that had the key to the nuclear codes? Right. There’s people that have privileged information that, again, whether it’s an eye scan, a thumb print, a voice print, a facial recognition stuff is scary stuff. And it may be above our pay grade. It’s okay to say, I don’t know. I don’t understand. But don’t just jump in and blindly do things that do things without understanding. There are repercussions to every bit of energy you put out. So what’s.
[01:04:32] Salwa Which is such a good reason for cannabis, right? Like when we’re sitting here going, talking about, you know, what’s happening in the world, it is so stressful and it’s so anxiety inducing and somebody like us where we’re action oriented people or we see a problem and we want to try to figure out how to fix it. But these problems are way beyond us, way beyond what we can do. And you’re just absorbing.
[01:04:57] Chang The overwhelming.
[01:04:58] Salwa Information and it’s overwhelming. And honestly, like, the only way I could get through a day and then put on a smile and be present with my kids is through cannabis.
[01:05:08] Chang Amen. Amen to cannabis. Good food, good people, you know? You know, you’ll be you’ll find yourself surrounded by positivity, usually, you know.
[01:05:21] Salwa Okay, So, Chang, before we let you go to lunch, or can you please give me a couple pointers for how to judge cannabis flower in a competition because I’m going to National Cannabis Fest in on for 20. I’m going to be judging Flower for my first time. I know that you a judge for Emerald Cup. Hook me up.
[01:05:44] Chang All right. So I think. The first thing to do a couple of things because it’s going to matter in your competition. This is why I honor the Emerald Cup, because I’ve seen I’ve been I’ve seen the process for some other competitions, but I can speak wholly to the Emerald Cup situation. So if you are a grower, let’s switch it around. Right. Pretend you are a grower, your blood, sweat and tears. You know what it’s like. And you think, Hey, I’m going to pay some money and sure, I’m going to enter it into this cup and what’s going to happen? Who’s going to get to smoke it? Who’s going to get to judge it? Why are they qualified? And I’ll tell you why. The Emerald Cup does a good job. They intake that flower, they test that flower, they categorize the flower based on chirping profile. And it’s a blind test when the judges get it. So the judges get a judge’s sash, which is super important, which is access to the flower in a large quantity plus a quarter pound. Okay. Why? So we can see. Nugs. Mids. Smalls. Visual. I can see the color. I can see the trichomes. I can see how it’s been processed, how it’s been trimmed, how it’s been cured. The number one thing about a flower is not growing it. It’s curing it. So I need to feel I need to feel the humidity on the flowers that dry. Is it sticky? Is it nothing? Is there smell? What’s the smell? Am I getting a good healthy smell? Is there anything on that flower that shouldn’t be on that flower? Mold. Mildew, Bugs. A lot of things. Those are your key visual things. Then you touch the flower, squeeze it, pop it over, then smell it, get inside of it. Yeah, there’s all these different terms, but that’s very important. Initially, tactile touch, vision and smell. Those are those are the initial basics, right? Then understanding the chirping profile, because that smell will be one of eight things carry offline pinyin pining lemon, meaning I can go through it. There’s a there’s all eight of them and the judges get a nice card and at least the lab has sort of. The judges also get a chance to reclassify the flowers. There’s eight classes, there’s indoor, there’s outdoor, there’s mixed light, third party verified, personal use goes on. You know, it’s it’s all the categories. So we get to touch, smell and feel the flowers. That’s important. Then, as a judge, the next most important thing is to smoke it. Right. But before you smoke it, how are you smoking it? Right. If I was a cultivator and you are smoking, you’re judging my weed. If you’re using old school, if you’re going to use a pipe, it better be a clean pipe, right? If you’re going to roll a joint that is the preferred method for the judges is a roll joint. The first thing you do somewhere is not light the joint, you take a dry hit. It’s the number one thing to do when you are judging or smoking marijuana. It trains your nose to smoke and accept the characteristics of the flower most people don’t know. That’s the number one thing I can give you is our.
[01:09:10] Salwa That’s it.
[01:09:11] Chang Your flower. It will give you so much more feedback and literally lead your nose right into when you’re smoking it. Is it consistent then when you smoke it? You can tell right away if that flower has been cured or flushed because of it. Little black things are coming off of it and it’s not burning white. That’s already a problem. You know, it cannot be flushed. It could be. It could just be it wasn’t processed. Right. But the dry heat. And then when you do smoke it, is it white or black? That will tell you almost everything you need to know.
[01:09:45] Salwa Beautiful. That was that was a helpful test. Honestly, I would have. I don’t do that. I would I roll a joint and I’m old school. Like all that’s okay. Whatever my husband has around. Well, but yeah.
[01:10:00] Chang Number one thing to be an expert flower judge when you can decipher the terpene profiles. But the only way to do that is to dry. Hit your flower. I’ll just let you know.
[01:10:08] Salwa Okay. Oh, my gosh. I love it. Chang, I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for accepting the email, accepting the follow up text.
[01:10:18] Chang Any time.
[01:10:19] Salwa Accepting the tech.
[01:10:22] Chang Hopefully people enjoy the conversation, you know? That’s why we’re doing it. I enjoy the time with you and I hope I you know, you had mentioned some things that you were kind of moving on in certain areas and you were hoping that I would kind of carry the torch. But I think I know that any time I need a solid perspective that I could come twist your arm. And any time you need anything from me, you know, you have 100% of my support and my network behind you.
[01:10:53] Salwa 100%. I’m your girl. When it comes to licensing, compliance, even out-of-state stuff like anything like that you need, I’m there and I love dabbling in events. So it’s a passion project to come to your shop.
[01:11:07] Chang I’m going to walk in, I’m going to go support you. I want to go see it’s cookies in Oakland.
[01:11:11] Salwa Cookies in Oakland. You got to give me a heads up. But yeah.
[01:11:15] Chang You are awesome. I would say all Oakland license holders hold a special place in my heart. I think you’ve dealt with so much adversity. I mean, I don’t even know if your customers realize. And so, like, you know, I know we’re ending the segment, but I will say this Salwa, I have so much respect and so much profound appreciation for the fact that you are still opening your doors today. And that says so much. And if people don’t realize that, they should understand that people in Oakland who specifically dealt with so much adversity between the community and probably just the greater humanity. You’ve dealt with BS, you’ve dealt with break ins and robberies and having to not have insurance or have insurance. I don’t know how you.
[01:12:11] Salwa It’s challenging.
[01:12:12] Chang How have you re-imagined yourself so many times?
[01:12:16] Salwa It’s challenging. This is my second store in Oakland. I started with Cookies. Oh, I’m sorry. I started with Bloom Oakland. Bloom Oakland was permit number five that was issued. There was four original permits, and then I got the fifth permit. And yeah, and at that point, it was like a license to do anything with cannabis because your regulars didn’t understand. So I just like balls to the wall. I went to cultivation, extraction just did as much as I possibly could. And then basically what took that public and was the first to go public and then basically placed my bets on all the different cannabis companies, became a shareholder of CannaCraft and Cookies and all these other things, and then basically did Grasslands and tried to pioneer that and then fell back into Cookies Oakland. What a ride. It’s been a ride.
[01:13:09] Chang People should be so thankful that you’re. You’re very resilient and you have a positive attitude and you are a positive force out there. I speak to so many people who are around you that have so much respect for what you’re doing. And you know, that’s no easy feat. And I know that the best of what you have to give to cannabis is still in front of you, not behind you with all that success, to know that the best of what you have in front of us. And I cannot wait to see what that is.
[01:13:41] Salwa Amazing. Well, thank you so much again. And thank you so much, classmates, for joining us for another episode of the High Class podcast. Keep on pursuing that high life. Thank you for listening to High Class. Please be sure to share the podcast and leave a review. If you’re ready to build a cannabis business that you can be proud of, start here today and head over to highsalwa.com to sign up for my newsletter. See you there.
