High Five: Mike McDonald

What’s the biggest challenge facing the cannabis industry right now, and how are you and/or your company addressing it?

Lack of new product innovation that gets consumers excited. Lack of innovation mostly due to operators’ bandwidth as shrinking margins, price compression and increased competition has been causing significant reductions in staff. RIFs continue to create bandwidth issues for anything other than the day to day operational needs. Thus, product innovation has become a lower priority to most in the industry.

Where do you see the most exciting opportunity for growth and innovation in cannabis?

I’m biased of course, but I think innovative, fully turnkey products or categories like dablicator. We are seeing new consumers and patients coming into the concentrates category because of dablicator. Consumers are discovering new uses for cannabis: direct application of fully activated cannabis oil on flower, joints, food, beverages, sublingually, as well as DIY filling of carts and capsules. Product and category innovation brings new customers into new categories resulting with excited customers and larger basket sizes for retailers.

What’s one piece of advice you would give to someone looking to break into the cannabis industry?

Advice depends on who we are talking about. If it is someone wanting to become part of the industry, beginning to build a career, my advice is get in any way you can. Find a retailer, grower or processor who has a good reputation, and jump in to whatever capacity is available or that speaks to you. Budtender, brand ambassador, sales person, processing lab staff, grow staff. When thinking about someone looking to invest in the industry, creating a new brand or retail opportunity, my advice is only do so if you have a long horizon to achieve success. The cannabis industry is extremely competitive, complicated and rife with failure. Align yourself with people with integrity, patient capital partners and remain patient yourself. Cannabis is not a get rich anytime soon scheme. But the cannabis industry will eventually be a mainstream federally legal consumer products category that will rival wine and spirits in size and reach.

What is the most important thing you have learned from your experiences in the cannabis industry?

Over the last 35 years, I’ve been part of multiple startup/early stage companies in various industries (services, furniture, construction, real estate, sporting goods). And I’ve been part of several public exits. I tell people that cannabis is the most fascinating industry and business model in which I’ve ever been involved. Dablicator and our parent company, Jetty Extracts, have been my first and only foray into the cannabis industry. I’ve been part of the Dablicator/Jetty leadership team since 2017. What have I learned? That cannabis, while fascinating, is really hard. What other consumer products industry makes you grow, process, package, and retail your product state by state? What industry doesn’t let you write off expenses other than cost of goods against your federal income tax? Show me an industry where there is no commercial capital available to run and grow your business and the only way for you to get capital is by ridiculously expensive debt or by selling off parts of your precious business little by little. Show me an industry where you have no or little banking access. Where we still have duffle bags of cash being toted up and down the freeways to hopefully be deposited in banks or credit unions that charge YOU 3% to 5% for the deposits you make into their banks. Show me an industry where there is a rampant black market business selling wares sometimes next store to our heavily taxed and regulated legal stores. The answer to the above questions is that there is not a single industry with even one of the issues or restrictions that we are burdened with in cannabis. Maybe alcohol during prohibition. Seems like you need to be insane to want to be involved in this industry. But it is so fascinating…but again, really hard. So what I’ve learned is just that. It’s hard, it takes patience, it takes extreme perseverance. For me, being/having been a part of an innovative and revolutionary business, and one that is helping millions of people, is extremely gratifying.

What do you want your legacy to be as it relates to the cannabis industry?

I’d like to be remembered as someone who stuck it out, with all the challenges and heartbreak. And my perseverance, in a small way, contributed to cannabis becoming part of the mainstream culture. Not just part of the recreational market but as a solution to so many medical needs that are currently being treated, if you can even say treated, with pharmaceuticals and other dangerous chemicals. That bringing cannabis to the mainstream, helping to destigmatize cannabis, shining a light on the racism and harm to mainly people of color that the opposition to cannabis has caused to our society. I’m hoping my grandkids or great grandkids one day will tell a story about how their granddad was part of this revolution.

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