Entrepreneur USA – September 2019

50 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2019

You made a good deal of

money on Wall Street. Why get

into the cannabis business?

One important investment

principle I learned early on: Do

what everyone else is not doing

and be right. In 2011, not many

people were involved with can-

nabis, and to be honest, I was a

little cynical at first. I was very

comfortable with Chardonnay

and Cabernet, but cannabis

wasn’t my thing. But I learned

two things. One, the operating

leverage in the business was

quite dramatic, and two, there

was medicinal value in the plant.

I was quite taken by all the

different ailments cannabis can

deal with. Being a financier on

Wall Street was economically

prosperous, but there’s been

no greater joy than being able

to help people help themselves

with cannabis.

You guessed right about

cannabis in 2011. Was that

an educated guess,

instinct, or a little bit of both?

I thought, How many cannabis

users in this world want to have

legal, regulated access to the

space? Couple that with the first

state east of the Mississippi that’s

getting involved [Maine], and

Q&A

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VISIT GREENENTREPRENEUR.COM

can’t care for them, we’re in big

trouble. Our customers come

second. We want to care for our

customers, but if we don’t have

compassionate employees, we’re

going to have a really tough time

achieving number two. But if we

get numbers one and two right,

we’re going to have some really

happy shareholders, which is

number three.

What maxim do you live by as

a business leader?

Givers win and takers lose. If

you can basically be in business

and put yourself forward to

wanting to give the best you

can possibly give and truly have

other people’s interests in mind,

at the end of the day, I believe it

comes back in spades.

Your best advice for cannabis

entrepreneurs?

Be an excellent team player and

know your lane. Don’t try to be

something you’re not. If you

need knee surgery, don’t call

me. I mean, I’ll give it a shot,

but I’m probably not your best

guy. Know exactly what your

skill set is, and play to it. A great

quarterback can throw, and a

great receiver can catch. If you

confuse those, you’re going to

lose a lot of money.

I’m thinking, If this state gets it

right, every other state will try to

get it right, and that’ll give me a

first-mover advantage. I saw that

as the macro trend—social buy-in

for cannabis. Now, did I ever

think 95 percent of the country

would believe cannabis should be

available for medical use, and 66

percent would believe it should

be available for adult use? Never.

There’s a lot of fear in the can-

nabis world that big business is

going to come in and squeeze

out the little guy. Is that true?

We started as a small business,

and we’re very fortunate to grow,

through timing, good partner-

ship, and loyal employees. Does

that mean we’re going to exclude

everyone else? No. We’re going

to take that bandwidth and that

heft and include more people.

I would say to all those people

who want to be in the business:

Do you feel that you’ve got a real

add and some real input? Come

see us, because we’re all ears. We

embrace that mindset, and we’re

just looking for a couple thou-

sand more people.

What’s the most essential

part of running a successful

business?

I rank our employees first. If we

T

he average cannabis consumer may

not have heard of Kevin Murphy,

but they’ve surely seen the headlines

he’s made as the CEO of Acreage

Holdings, the largest vertically

integrated, multistate cannabis

company in America. Last year, he got

former House Speaker John Boehner to join

his board of directors—despite Boehner’s

having claimed to be “unalterably opposed

to the legalization of marijuana.” Then

Murphy’s company produced a cannabis

Super Bowl ad; when CBS rejected it

(to nobody’s surprise), Acreage spun

the moment into PR gold. And in April,

Murphy made headlines again when he sold

Acreage to Canopy Growth for $3.4 billion.

It’s been a great run for this former

Wall Street investor, who first got involved

in cannabis in Maine eight years ago.

Acreage’s portfolio includes cultivation,

processing, and dispensaries—but despite

now being one of the industry’s major

players, he believes there’s still plenty of

room for small businesses with big ideas.

→ THE BOTANIST

Acreage’s Baltimore

store opened in

September 2018.