How a Cannabis Entrepreneur Built and Sold a $22M Company Without Ever Using the Product

Vance Crowe [00:00:00] If your goal is to sit around and you say, I, I want to get into the cannabis industry so I can smoke marijuana and smoke cannabis all

Tony Sansone III [00:00:08] Day,

Vance Crowe [00:00:09] You know, and have fun. It is not the industry for you.

Tony Sansone III [00:00:12] This is the Vance Crow podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:00:18] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. This week's interview, I have been waiting weeks and weeks to get him on the show. His name is Tony Sansone and he is the first person I've ever known and probably one of the few people in the world that have ever started a recreational cannabis company and then sold it for $22 million. And as soon as you see Tony Sansone III, you realize this is a very young guy to have done such a big amount of business. He is a really interesting character. He can talk all about literature and and business, and he has a very interesting take on the world. And you will find out really quickly in the interview that even though he started this company, he does not drink or smoke or use recreational drugs in any way. And it makes him an interesting character in, in this world of cannabis as a totally new industry is coming about. So this is a fascinating interview. Before I get started, I wanted to give a little bit of a shout out to my friends at Farm Hats. This is a group of guys started with Kent Blumer and a few other key members that decided agriculture did not do a good job of showing all of the different types of work or the different types of hats that farmers wear. And so they created a Facebook page that shows, Hey, today I'm shoveling out the hog barns, or tomorrow I'm gonna be driving on the grain elevator and to the grain elevator. And, and then other days I'm working on accounting.

Vance Crowe [00:01:49] So if you ever wanna see an interesting view of agriculture that is away from kind of the propagandistic commercials, go check out farm hats. Until then, why don't you sit down, buckle in and enjoy this interview with one of the most intriguing entrepreneurs out there today. Tony Sansone III. Tony Sansone III. Welcome to the podcast. Hey Vance. Hey, now it's great to see you. I've only seen you what, one time. Yeah. Since we made a journey out to visit you in Las Vegas, Nevada. That's correct. And I made that journey because your dad, who has been a great friend to me, heard that I was interested in understanding the cannabis business and you had been running a business out there. Yeah. So he said, if you get out and see my son, he'll, he'll show you around. And so that is how you and I met and I got to see a giant building Yeah. Filled with cannabis plants. Why don't you start off by telling, what in the heck were you doing out in Las Vegas and what did we see when we were out there? So this, when you came out to visit, what you saw was a fully operational cultivation facility

Tony Sansone III [00:02:59] Based in North Las Vegas, Nevada. So I'll kind of give you the backstory here. My father and I with a group of our partners invested in a license, a cultivation license out in Las Vegas. We bought that secondhand on the market and with a group of operating partners. So this was in February, 2016. And from there we built out a fully operational cultivation facility that was 30,000 square feet. Produce produces now about a thousand pounds of cannabis per month. Flash forward, once we built that, we sold it in August of 2018 to a publicly traded company. And knock on wood, did, did fairly well on the investment. And so that's what you saw.

Vance Crowe [00:03:59] So you're completely outta that business now,

Tony Sansone III [00:04:01] Out of that specific operation. We are, yeah. We sold out to a company called Mhar Dean. They're one of the, one of the larger groups out there. They're publicly traded on the Canadian Stock Exchange and you know, public information. They bought it from us for in and, and our general operating partners in August, 2018 for 22 million. So it was, yeah. So we're, we're out of that. And

Vance Crowe [00:04:28] So

Tony Sansone III [00:04:28] How

Vance Crowe [00:04:29] Much did it cost? You said you bought a license on the secondary market, meaning somebody got got in line. Yeah. Got the, got the license and then said, I think it's worth this much. Do, can you say how much you paid for that?

Tony Sansone III [00:04:41] I would, it's, I prefer not to, but it was, you know, it was a significant investment, but probably not as much as some people think.

Vance Crowe [00:04:52] Was it more to get the license or to do the work? To put the building together? Oh,

Tony Sansone III [00:04:55] Far more to do the work.

Vance Crowe [00:04:56] Oh, really? Okay.

Tony Sansone III [00:04:57] Yeah, yeah, yeah. The building itself was a sig. I mean, that's really, so,

Vance Crowe [00:05:01] But people like, you know what, like, because most of the listeners will have never seen a cannabis grow operation. They particularly have never seen one in Las Vegas. Yeah. So the crazy thing that happened when, when we went out there, we landed in a plane, I was there with a couple of friends Yeah. And we stopped off at the hotel and then we came out to see you. And when we have this rental car, you're driving out into the middle of nowhere and it's just industrial parks. Yeah. Where you have building after building that looked like, I don't know, they could be storage closets. Yeah. They could just be, they're completely non-descript concrete buildings. You come inside of a fenced area and all I see is a wall that somebody, there's a door, but it's got a clear mechanism on that's locking it. I knock on the door. And that's when you and I meet once we're in the building. Yeah. What do people see?

Tony Sansone III [00:05:47] It's pretty, it's pretty remarkable. It's, if you can imagine something, you know, what you would see in the, in the movies, you know, like in a James Bond movie like this, this giant bank vault. That's really what it's like. The walls are incredibly thick concrete. You've got security cameras everywhere. And you go in and there's this, you know, you've got the, there's some technical terms, which you've got the dry rooms, cutting rooms. You're in this hallway, concrete walls. And then there's another steel door we put on our booties. You've gotta put on basically what looks like a hazmat suit. And you put on your booties your internet. Internet Yeah. And face mask. And then you open this second door and you just see, well, you know, I mean rows, you know, basically as far back as, as you know, I mean as your eyes,

Vance Crowe [00:06:37] The first row that the first room that we went into, your eyes are immediately caught off guard. 'cause there's these really intense growing lights. Right. And these are all baby cannabis plants. Yeah. Which was hilarious because, you know, you see cannabis plants on TV when the, when the feds are pulling 'em up and Yeah. You know, they're showing B roll of it. But then you walk into this room and these are all really well lit individually potted

Tony Sansone III [00:06:59] Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:06:59] Baby cannabis plants. Yeah. The, the characteristic leaves and what is going on in that building? You have special people in that room that are extremely good at breeding. What are they doing?

Tony Sansone III [00:07:09] So you're doing everything from, you know, from the, basically from the tiniest plant to growing it to harvest. Everything is being done in that facility

Vance Crowe [00:07:20] All the way from seed. You start from seed.

Tony Sansone III [00:07:22] Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, you've got, yeah. And it's a, it's a pretty remarkable process. And you see the, well, I mean the thing that always blows my mind is, you know, from what prior to being in this industry to being in it now you see the sophistication changing every, I mean by the day. And as you can see by, by the operation. And that really, I, I don't want to take credit for that. That really goes to our operating partners who've been in this industry, well since it started in Colorado. What

Vance Crowe [00:07:59] Are their names?

Tony Sansone III [00:08:00] That was a group called f and l Investments. And two of the founders were also the founders of a company of Emma Hard Dean. And, and Mhar Dean is, they're the publicly traded company that ended up buying the, the, the entire operation. They, MHAR Dean specializes in, basically think of them as like a management company. You know, a good example would be like a Marriott. You know, you put the Marriott flag on a, on a piece of property and they manage and operate it. This is

Vance Crowe [00:08:30] Essential. They tell you, follow these rules and we'll let you keep on whatever money you make. We'll kill. Yeah, yeah. We'll do together.

Tony Sansone III [00:08:36] And that's, and that was really you sort of, the, the impetus behind all this is that when we got into this, I know we're kind of getting away from where actually No, we're good man. It's good. Yeah. It's, and this is the stuff that particularly interests me. My father, especially my father, I have to give him, excuse me, a good, good deal of credit on this is that when whenever we look at something, especially outside of

Vance Crowe [00:09:02] The St. Louis area

Tony Sansone III [00:09:03] Yeah. And his comfort zone, you really want to want to align with the best partners. You can't, you've seen a lot of people make a lot of mistakes. You know, because they've been really successful in one industry, automatically think that that can translate into another. There was a great, you probably saw this, 'cause I know you read this and a great article that came out in Harvard Business Review. They were talking about leadership and it was a pretty large scale study. And what they found is, is that leadership is not one of these, you know, the, the Steve Jobs, those types are sort of the exception to the world. But a lot of great leaders have a real specific technical expertise in their industry and they also have that sort of leadership skill and it doesn't necessarily translate into another industry. And so technical expertise absolutely matters. And, and especially in an industry like cannabis, it's, it's, it's vitally important. It can't be underestimated. Well, so, you know, just

Vance Crowe [00:10:04] Even going back into the, the small growing room that we're talking about, just outside of that room Yeah. Is sophisticated water fertilizing system where there are individuals that are outside that are filling it up, getting the exact right nutrients there, and then whatever the computer deems is the right thing for the, for the plants. Yeah.

Tony Sansone III [00:10:24] Then

Vance Crowe [00:10:24] They all work together, put on a schedule and, and it's, and it's light for a certain amount of time. So when you get there, it, it is not like growing weed in your closet. Right. This is like, if you were gonna do it so that you could get the absolute best return on investment and, and grow the highest quality thing that you could. And there are real controls there. Yeah. Right. Like you were very serious about we do not want fungus in here. Yeah. We don't want insects. What, what goes on? What are you protecting? How, how does it grow?

Tony Sansone III [00:10:55] Well, the, the product itself is, it's, you know, in terms of, you've gotta, you've gotta cut a number of different things here at work. You've got, you've gotta be extremely careful from, and this is less of a problem in places like Las Vegas, but you've got parasites, you know, dust mites. Dust mites is the big one. And if your harvest, I, I have a friend, I'll give you an example, who has an outdoor, and he's incredibly sophisticated farmer. He's got an outdoor grow in, in Colorado. And it's one of the largest outdoor grows I've seen. And because it's subject to the elements, and you may know this, the Colorado had one of their coldest winters ever recently. One of their heaviest snowfalls, his entire crop froze.

Vance Crowe [00:11:41] Oh.

Tony Sansone III [00:11:41] And he was done, you know, and he was able to salvage it, turn, convert things into oils and process it. But in terms of actual flower product, he was done. When you're indoors and you, and you're in a highly, highly regulated new market like Nevada, every, and you're being, I mean you could, in our facility there, I still call it our facility. I mean, you saw it, the floors there, you could eat ice cream off the floors. Oh yeah. I mean they were, in terms of the regulations involved in the testing, you can't have any mistakes. Not one

Vance Crowe [00:12:16] Yeah. No residues of chemicals. No, you, if you have the fungus on there is, and, and the interesting thing, so you come at this from the business angle. Yeah. And one of the things that you were teaching me when we were out there was a lot of people made mistakes 'cause they bought the highest end equipment they could. They were ready to pour as much money as they possibly could and they entered too much supply into the market. Yeah. And so you guys actually jumped on that curve, right? Like after people slammed into the wall. 'cause they were going too fast and they produced too much. Isn't, isn't that right? That's,

Tony Sansone III [00:12:48] Yeah, that's absolutely right. And again, I don't want to take credit for this. This was something that we had a pretty, pretty heavy debate about. And this is where having good partners is essential and letting operators do what they do best. The impulse is always is to move, is to act. And for most people, and especially if you're an entrepreneur, it can be to act. And oftentimes you're better taking a second to think. And we really, we took some time to think about it and we decided to hold off. And that was really a, a credit to our, so

Vance Crowe [00:13:22] Describe this, you're saying there were other people that could start growing at one point?

Tony Sansone III [00:13:26] We could have started growing. So, you know, from day one, the question is, is once recreational passed, so I should step back here. Recreational passed, this was recreational cannabis. So where you could anyone it at 21 or older in the state of Nevada can go and buy cannabis for recreational per, for recreational purposes. For a lot of places, if you're in a medical market versus a recreational market. The difference is, you know, is pretty extreme in, in the sense of that's the difference between a viable business and a non-viable business. There are exceptions. Arizona is a medical state, and this is, I'm, I'm speaking solely on the business end of things. And it's a very viable market for everyone, for patients, for caregivers, and for operators. And, and that's a good thing in my opinion. You, Nevada is structured in such a way, it's a great state that, you know, it, the market in terms of it working really kind of depends on a, on a recreational model. And so when recreational passed, people said, we've gotta get up and running. Now we've gotta start producing what they didn't take into consideration. And a lot of these people, you know, can't, can't blame them. Didn't have experience in the industry. And that gets into a whole other issue with this industry. And the impulse was we've gotta get our product out there. We've gotta spend whatever it takes to get it out there. The problem with that is that when you're in a highly regulated industry, and the rules and regs are still being pushed out, if you've got a full harvest ready to go, but it hasn't caught the rules and regs haven't caught up with this with

Vance Crowe [00:15:08] Oh, people start stockpiling

Tony Sansone III [00:15:10] And then you're done because you're not by your harvest can go bad. And then you're sitting on it, you have to run these facilities 20 basically 24 hours.

Vance Crowe [00:15:21] Oh. So you're making payments to the employees that are working there, the electric, that you're using this stuff and you're not getting any return. Yeah. So if you didn't have a war chest that would allow you to outlast the, the pent up supply people tanked.

Tony Sansone III [00:15:36] Yeah. So there was a, there was a group out there that I'm thinking they had a similar size operation to ours. And their investment, you know, it resulted in a permanent loss of capital. Their investment went to zero because they,

Vance Crowe [00:15:52] That had to blow people's minds. Yeah. 'cause you know, it's like, hey, this is a new market, this is a new product. Everybody wants it. The demand is going to be unlimited. And then to, to have to go back to your shareholders or whoever invested and be like, not only did we not make, not only are we no longer in business, we aren't gonna be able to give you your money back.

Tony Sansone III [00:16:10] Yeah. You're done. And this gets into one of the biggest myths about this industry is that it's, I mean it truly is comparable in a lot of ways to the gold rush. Most it, it is not. The joke is how do you, how do you make a, a small fortune in cannabis and start with a large fortune. And because sounds

Vance Crowe [00:16:32] Like farming in general.

Tony Sansone III [00:16:33] Exactly. And that's, that's a very apt comparison. 'cause that's really, especially on the cultivation side, that's really what

Vance Crowe [00:16:40] 'cause it is farming. Yeah, yeah, it is. Yeah.

Tony Sansone III [00:16:42] You're essentially what you're looking at. And you have to see, I don't have that my, my interest in the industry. I, you know, I, and I'm pretty open about this. I lean libertarian. I don't, I don't drink, I don't use recreational drugs. My, but do you

Vance Crowe [00:16:59] Consider cannabis a recreational drug? Sure. So do you use cannabis?

Tony Sansone III [00:17:02] I do not.

Vance Crowe [00:17:02] So have you ever

Tony Sansone III [00:17:04] I have never used cannabis. Some people are, I almost hesitate to say that because people, people don't believe me. But it's the truth. I've never used it. It's

Vance Crowe [00:17:12] Funny 'cause we've definitely hit a culture change where the more awkward laugh is no, I actually haven't.

Tony Sansone III [00:17:18] As opposed

Vance Crowe [00:17:19] To Yeah. Yeah. I've smoked weed. Like

Tony Sansone III [00:17:21] Yeah. Yeah. And, and I mean, listen, I have no issue with it. I mean, I would, I'm in the business. I would say it if I did, but it's, it's so,

Vance Crowe [00:17:27] So why not? Why, why haven't you,

Tony Sansone III [00:17:29] You know, the reason, well, I don't, I don't drink, I don't use any recreational drugs. And I stopped, I, I stopped drinking shortly after my mother passed away when I was in high school. And how

Vance Crowe [00:17:42] Old were you?

Tony Sansone III [00:17:43] I was 17.

Vance Crowe [00:17:44] And what happened?

Tony Sansone III [00:17:46] For me, my choice to, to stop drinking was really to kind of focus on my own life. I mean, I, you know, experimented with, with alcohol and it was, but for me in, you know, there's a history, my, on my mother's side of the family of depression, things like that. It was really, if I wanna live the best life I can, I've gotta take, you know, for me personally, I don't use any substances.

Vance Crowe [00:18:10] So how old were you when you quit drinking?

Tony Sansone III [00:18:12] I was 18.

Vance Crowe [00:18:13] I mean, that takes a tremendous amount of discipline because there's that allure. Like, just try something. Sure. Just, I mean, it could be fun. And, and, and yet you've passed it up. Do you, I mean, it doesn't sound like you're regretting it. No, not

Tony Sansone III [00:18:26] At all. At all. No. And this is the way I look at it. It is that, and this is, and this is not, you know, and, and listen, I am economically, you know, I have an economic interest in this industry. So take it for what it's worth. But I think I'm being, I'm, I'm being honest when I say this is that, you know, I mean, you know, my father, my father loves wine. He collects wine. My father is that, that's great. There are some people though that just like diabetes that can't, you know, they have a different reaction, physiological psychological reaction to things like alcohol things, you know, to cannabis that is, that is different from the average person. And it's life in general is far more complex, I think, than we wanna admit. It is. I mean, I know people that, that use cannabis and are, couldn't be more efficient or productive. I, I'm thinking of one individual who's actually in the industry uses cannabis semi-regularly. He's done seven Ironman competitions. I think he gets up at 4:00 AM goes to bed at 11 and runs an absolutely incredibly successful business and has a great family life. I know, I know other people, and I'm sure you do too, that smoke cannabis all day and accomplish nothing.

Vance Crowe [00:19:48] Yeah. I mean, I think alcohol is the one that people don't have real conversations Sure. About. And I think that most people that are energetic and high energy and like to get things done also do that same thing when they start doing stuff like drinking alcohol. I mean, I think for me, that that would be a great example. I I, and then the next day, it's not like I, I threw up everywhere and I, and I Sure. You know, lost control and said, and insane things. No, I wake up the next day and my day is 20% as valuable as it could be.

Tony Sansone III [00:20:21] And when

Vance Crowe [00:20:22] You're in your twenties, it's okay to throw off a couple 20% days. Yeah. You get into your thirties, you, you lose a day, you lose a Sunday. That's either time with your family Yeah. That you could have really enjoyed or it's time that you could have been getting after it.

Tony Sansone III [00:20:35] And

Vance Crowe [00:20:35] It, it's interesting because alcohol is one of those things that I think most people, even if they don't have a chemical dependence on it Yeah. The social dependence on it Oh sure. Is so strong that they, they don't even consider that they could actually live life without it. And so it's astounding to me that since you were 18, you've not had that dragon on your shoulder to,

Tony Sansone III [00:20:58] To deal with. Yeah. I mean it, well, I appreciate that. It's, what, what can I say? I'm, you know, I'm fortunate and it was also, you know, and I think part of it is because it happened, I didn't have this because it happened when I was 18. I stopped when I was 18. I didn't have this history, you know, like 20 year history Right. Of, you know, I didn't go to bars. I mean, I was 18 years old. I went to a Catholic boys high school. The, I didn't, so I didn't, I wasn't going to bars or anything like that. I didn't have that social, social experience, social conditioning of this is how I socialize and, you know, so when you think about it, I mean, I guess I started experimenting with alcohol when I was 14. And by 18, you know, I haven't had a drink since I was 18 years old. So I don't have, you know, it's this tiny window.

Vance Crowe [00:21:52] I, I mean it's amazing. And I think that probably speaks to why, I mean, you are a difficult guy to get on the podcast 'cause you are one of the busiest human beings. I know. You're not even always in St. Louis. No. You're, you're running around doing all kinds of things. Yeah. What do you do with all this time that you have that's, that's productive?

Tony Sansone III [00:22:09] So I do, I spend, in terms of my working, working day, I've got a new company with a partner out of, he's out of Dallas, Texas. It's been very, very successful. Entrepreneur has a couple of IPOs himself. And we've got a business where we, we provide access to debt capital for operators in the cannabis industry. And because what

Vance Crowe [00:22:31] Is debt capital,

Tony Sansone III [00:22:32] Like traditional bank financing. So the, the, you know, equity versus debt capital, most of the industry now is in the private, you know, in the private sector or privately held companies rather, is most of the capital on that now is equity capital. So if you wanna build, if you wanna start a vertically inter integrated cannabis operation in Los Angeles, California, and so you've got a cultivation, you know, manufacturing and dispensary, you've got, and you're gonna say, that's gonna cost me. I'm just making up numbers here. That's gonna cost me $10 million. You can't go to, excuse me. You can't go to Wells Fargo and say, Hey, I need Yeah. Banks

Vance Crowe [00:23:22] Won't touch it.

Tony Sansone III [00:23:22] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:23:22] They won. They won't touch it. And so you have figured out, so this is interesting because banks, they know that the opportunity is there. When was the last time a completely new industry just rolled into the world where demand was at? It's like discovering Apple computers or just computers in general and then saying, well, the, the banking rules aren't, aren't clear. So none of the banks are gonna do that. So all of that capital that is tied up in banks, you, you, how many people are out there doing what you guys are doing? Debt, debt there?

Tony Sansone III [00:23:54] There's some, but there's not a ton. And the issue, the big is, is finding, is connecting, is finding the source of the capital and then connecting them with the right people. Because this is a fascinating industry in the sense that it's one of the, the oldest products in the world that people have used on a regular basis that hasn't been effectively branded yet. And, and it's in this weird sort of legal state. I I I think it's, you know, basically if you go to any business school or any, you know, public policy, you go public policy institution, there's a path towards, you know, legalization for cannabis. I don't know what exactly that's going to look like. We can get into that later. But I don't think that there's any debate about this. The public acceptance of this pro. I mean, if you look at polling the public's sort of overwhelmingly in support, not only a medical,

Vance Crowe [00:24:50] It's a question of are they gonna get it done before this presidential election Sure. Or will it be a promise that everybody will make by the next one? But that that's, that's it. Yeah.

Tony Sansone III [00:24:58] And it's a very funny thing. So I have a friend at the Brookings Institution who, who writes specifically about cannabis policy. And he mentioned something that was really, really interesting. 'cause people said, well if all these people support it, why hasn't it been federally legal? And he mentioned, this is a, this is why social science is really fascinating. And he said, when you ask people if they support it, you know, whether it's medical or recreational, they say yeah, usually, you know, for the majority of people say yes. But when you ask people what are the top 20 issues that concern you as an American, cannabis doesn't fall in there. In general, when you, when you pull people, you know, it's healthcare, it's, you know, the big things we see on the news Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:25:41] Every

Tony Sansone III [00:25:41] Day. And cannabis ends up on the news because it's got this allure to it. And, but when you ask people what's really, really important to them, you know, like the top 20 issues, I think that's what he said. I think it's top 20 of you, either that or top 10. It doesn't fall in there. But

Vance Crowe [00:25:56] Don't you think if there were a president running on day one of my presidency, recreational federally legal, and all of the banks can get in on this game. I mean that they, they would have tremendous support for that. I don't

Tony Sansone III [00:26:09] Know, to be honest with you. I think do I, do I think it moves the needle? Is it, is it a place for them to plant a flag to, to really to make that a successful campaign? I'm not sure about that. And I, you know, that's a really honest answer. It's important to me. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:26:25] I mean maybe. Well, and I I also wonder if the fact that it's gone state by state hasn't been better for figuring out what's the right way to do this.

Tony Sansone III [00:26:34] That's exactly,

Vance Crowe [00:26:35] You get to start a bunch of little incubators and see which one did it well and which one screwed it up.

Tony Sansone III [00:26:40] So I'll give you a kind of pull back the curtain here a little bit. And this is not anything super secretive, but for people out the outside the industry, it can be something of a surprise. We, the, the notion that everyone in this industry wants there to be federal legality.

Vance Crowe [00:27:00] Yeah. They're not thinking about the game.

Tony Sansone III [00:27:02] It's not accurate. Because the, one of the conversations we had early on, I mean, when we, we, when we just made our investment, when we, we talked with some people that had already been successful and had already made significant investments. And turns out, so this was November of 2016, October, November, 2016. The, in talking to some people, the, you know, they suggested, hey, so you've got an operation Nevada, you've got a decent sized growth facility. I've got an, I'm thinking one person specific who said this. He said, I've got a million square feet of outdoor growth space in California and I'm growing at X dollars per pound. You're growing at five x per pound. If, if this product becomes federally legal and there's no interstate commerce,

Vance Crowe [00:27:59] Then his grow is gone.

Tony Sansone III [00:28:01] No, my grow is gone because I'm growing at five. He's got, he's got a million square feet of outdoor grow space. Oh, I'm growing at my cost is five times. It's actually over five times what his are Oh, I

Vance Crowe [00:28:13] Didn't realize you were saying the cost of it. I was thinking the productivity of it. No,

Tony Sansone III [00:28:16] The cost.

Vance Crowe [00:28:17] Oh, then you're dead. And then he goes to open.

Tony Sansone III [00:28:19] Yeah. 'cause then he, I can ship, I can ship over state lines. I,

Vance Crowe [00:28:24] And then you just start having, where are the best growing conditions in the United, United States's commodity Or, or really in the world. Yeah. Right. Because as soon as the US does it, there's gonna be very, very few warm climate. What countries would be producing the most marijuana?

Tony Sansone III [00:28:37] I've heard Columbia, and that was the one that's being mentioned.

Vance Crowe [00:28:40] But if you opened up legalization, would it go to Africa? Would it go to, I mean, on the same latitude of

Tony Sansone III [00:28:46] You have other concerns in Africa. I mean, you know, you've got geopolitical concerns as well, you know, the stability concerns, I think you would have. But, you know, I don't see why not. I mean, essentially the way to think of this, and we kind of started with this, is I don't have that connection. You know, I, I'm interested in legalization for a couple of reasons for the social impact, social justice reasons as well as, you know, for my own economic interest, and I'm, I'm unabashedly you know, pro market economy. I mean, I believe in market economies and in what they do. Not just, you know, from an economic impact, but also for, for the social impact. You

Vance Crowe [00:29:28] Let's, well, so let's talk about the social impact, because you were out in, in Las Vegas as this became recreationally legal. I have a good friend that when we were talking about legalization, he got really upset. And this is a free market capitalist guy. This is a guy that has built a great business. He's taught me a ton. And then we were talking one day about what happens if they do legalization. And this was actually a few years ago, so it was not obvious that legalization was gonna happen. And he said, I think that's the worst thing that could happen to society. I think we will turn into pottersville. What do you think? Do you, do you turn into Pottersville? Did Las Vegas go down? No. I mean, Las Vegas isn't really a fair comparison because that's sin city, you know? Yeah.

Tony Sansone III [00:30:10] But

Vance Crowe [00:30:10] Do you think the other places that have allowed recreational are there, there're a lot more vagrant and it's

Tony Sansone III [00:30:16] Quite the opposite actually. And this is the thing, and, and I respect that opinion. And listen, you're talking to somebody who doesn't drink alcohol Right. And doesn't use recreational drugs. And it's the, and they've done some studies on this, you know, and again, you could sort of get studies to say what you want, but there hasn't been anything, I haven't seen anything that's refuted these yet is that cannabis use doesn't increase in recreational markets.

Vance Crowe [00:30:46] The meaning that everybody that's gonna go buy it illegal is already buying it illegally. Yeah.

Tony Sansone III [00:30:50] And this is the funny this, that for the people that get into just on the business side of things, you're competing with the black market. I mean, that, that black, you know, that's a concern even in a city that was part of why we chose Las Vegas is because you're essentially operating on the tourism model. We, you know, and we think pretty, and I, I like to believe I do, I think pretty deeply and seriously about every investment that I make, which isn't many. And part of the appeal of Nevada and Las Vegas is that you're, you're dealing with, you know, upwards of 50 million tourists a year that don't have established black market contacts. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:31:27] And they wanna come out and they're, and they're having a great time and they're on vacation. Yeah. So this is gonna be a great place, and if you can, then you can turn it really not into a commodity as much as, let me give them an experience. Sure. You can sell all kinds of add-ons.

Tony Sansone III [00:31:40] Sure. And, and that's really the, but there's a black market in Las Vegas, you know, we found that out trying

Vance Crowe [00:31:49] To avoid the taxes on it.

Tony Sansone III [00:31:50] Yeah. And be just simply because, and this is the weird voodoo of this industry, and the difference between a viable market and a non-viable market, is that if you issue from a, from, and I'm talking on the business side of things, if you issue far too many licenses or you, you do, you know, basically an open system where if you just, if you want a license, you can get one to open up a dispensary or cultivation, you know, it's essentially a perfect competition and imperfect competition. All profits get competed away. It's great for consumers.

Vance Crowe [00:32:21] Great for the consumer, right. Yeah. You, that's what you want. Yeah.

Tony Sansone III [00:32:22] Yeah. Less

Vance Crowe [00:32:23] Monopolies, more competition. Exactly.

Tony Sansone III [00:32:24] Right. The problem when you make it a monopoly is, and this is a, is that, and this can be hard for people, you know, in business that, that you know, are, are getting into this new industry, is they don't take into account. I mean, if you, if you're, you know, if you produce candy, if you produce Starburst or you know, you're probably the Mars Corporation, you're not thinking of, you know, somebody on the street selling black market Skittles, you know, because they're, you've got the brand built around it. But if you're in cannabis, you've gotta think about the fact that, okay, you've got taxes, you've got, you know, water and power, you know,

Vance Crowe [00:33:00] You gotta go through regulation, you gotta get your stuff tested. Sometimes it's not gonna pass. Yeah. So then you, then you have to take it to oil. When, when the flour was the most valuable thing.

Tony Sansone III [00:33:08] So you're, if, if the black market is essentially kind of close to the same product, you know, in terms of quality, but, and it's 50% cheaper, people are gonna go to the black market.

Vance Crowe [00:33:19] And do you foresee that it'll be like treated like black market pharmaceuticals at some point? Like if I was making Sudafed d in my, in my factory, you know, in my warehouse, the government's gonna show up, kick the door down and be like, whoa, whoa, whoa. You're not doing that here. Will that happen with cannabis?

Tony Sansone III [00:33:36] Yeah. It's tough to say because there's, this is why things are, when I say when we were talking about this earlier, you know, life is very, as I get older, I realize much about life. None of it is really black and white and what applies in situation A doesn't necessarily apply in situation B because there's this cultural exchange happening now where, where as we're becoming more open to cannabis. I mean, if you look at the statistics about baby boomers and their inter, I mean, it's sort of remarkable. I, that's the thing that always shocks me. Is there openness to, to using cannabis when you, as that grows, so does the opposition to strict enforcement against the black market. Against. And because, you know, and I, and I'm all for this, I don't, I certainly don't think we should be locking people up for selling a Diamondback, but as an operator, it does affect, you know, my business. If you've got people,

Vance Crowe [00:34:36] If I'm playing by the rules and they aren't Yeah. Then, then

Tony Sansone III [00:34:39] I, and so there's this weird b and i, I mean this sincerely, I just don't think, I mean, from a moral perspective, I don't, you know, I have a tough time trying to, even though it hurts my bottom line and advocating that these people, you know, are arrested. And I mean

Vance Crowe [00:34:55] This, this is good. It's great to be having an honest conversation about that. Because too often what you see with people that believe that they're libertarians is they're libertarians write up until there's a chance that the government Right. Might write them a check or write down their debt or, or do whatever enforce the rules on the other guy. Yeah. And now it benefits them. And so it's like, well,

Tony Sansone III [00:35:15] Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:35:16] Yeah, I'm a libertarian, but you know, I'm just playing by the rules here. It is refreshing to hear somebody say like, you know, I don't really want, I don't want people being interested for this. Yeah.

Tony Sansone III [00:35:25] And I, I, I don't Now do I think that, and I'm also one of these, when I say Eileen Libertarian, it's my, it's my sort of philosophical inning. I was thinking of Gary Johnson spoke at, I can't remember if it was the libertarian party convention, but it was, and

Vance Crowe [00:35:40] Oh, you're libertarian enough to go to the conventions.

Tony Sansone III [00:35:43] Yeah, I'll go to those. I mean, I, I wouldn't say I'm libertarian enough. This is a funny thing because I end up arguing with everybody there, but he was saying, you know, somebody asked him, do you think people should, you know, be required to have a driver's license? Said, yeah, I think that that's a re you know, he got booed. So it's, you know, that's not, I,

Vance Crowe [00:36:00] I mean, purists are always difficult. Yeah. You know, the, the, going back to what we were talking about with the incubations, by having it state by state, I mean, this goes along with my hypothesis that cities are actually the only place that you can live. You live in a state, but not really. Right? Yeah. You live in one part of a state. Yeah. And so the, the fact that there, we have this federalist system, it feels like we want more and more government control, but in reality, what we want is more local control allows you to participate more fully. If you vote in an election, you have a much bigger sway in it. I think cities are the governance model of the distant future.

Tony Sansone III [00:36:41] It's, it's pretty, when you look, so take a, take a state like California, you go to San Francisco and then you go to San Diego, they may culturally, they may well may well be two different countries in terms of their, their the cultural environment. There are parts of California that are so libertarian and or so conservative that it's almost shocking to believe.

Vance Crowe [00:37:04] Well, I mean, it, it is not that different from Texas. Exactly.

Tony Sansone III [00:37:07] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:37:07] And, and particularly, I mean, I'm in the, I'm in the ag world, right. I'm going around and speaking with a lot of these groups. And if you think you could give the same speech in San Francisco that you could give in the Central Valley. Exactly. I mean, they're different things Yeah. That people believe entirely different ideas. Their jokes are different. Yeah. That like, you're totally right about them being different countries. So

Tony Sansone III [00:37:27] Your point is well taken. And, and this is the thing, and I have to, we're that's, I am such, so I, and I'm reading this fabulous book right now, and I know I, I assume most of your audience, if they're listening to you, probably reads a lot. And it's a book called, and Lee Qua Yu the Grandma's Insights on United States, China Qua Yu is the founder or the founding prime minister of Singapore. And

Vance Crowe [00:37:52] Oh, what great timing to read on that. Okay. Interesting.

Tony Sansone III [00:37:56] His achievement when he took a a third world nation to the first world in, in a single generation is unprecedented. What did he do that by it being a democracy? No, and this is what's interesting, what our federalist, there's something uniquely American about our federalist system that works. I, I think it works. And, and I love it. Does it, does it translate, you know, elsewhere? I mean, Singapore is this tiny nation where you're able to do that. We're, you know, a a big massive nation in this federalist system where you have a state by state, you know, operating government and,

Vance Crowe [00:38:37] And the closer you get to home, it should be more control Yeah. As opposed to less.

Tony Sansone III [00:38:42] That's my inclination.

Vance Crowe [00:38:44] I mean the, the, the concept of school districts was actually a really brilliant idea. You get to teach your children about how the world works and what's important to them and their future.

Tony Sansone III [00:38:55] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:38:56] Based on your decisions. Not somebody living in a state capitol or a national, you know, this is what we think they should learn nationally. The more that you have control over, what are your kids doing, how is your law enforcement being handled? What, what rules are most important to you? That is what makes a place, one place better to live in than the other. And Singapore's just, I mean, it's a great example. Yeah. Where do you wanna start a business? Yeah. In the place where there are the fewest rules to start businesses.

Tony Sansone III [00:39:24] It's the, the whole thing and the complexity, again, we're back on complexity, is just so, and I've heard this, and you and I have talked about things like that. So you being in the ag world and where you have school districts in, in certain states that were against, you know, teaching evolution and they wanted stickers on and how that, you know, saying, well, you know, this is a federalist system we want, and, you know, that went to the, what was it, Dover Kits, Miller, I can't remember, but where that went to the Supreme Court

Vance Crowe [00:39:56] And Oh, the scopes Monkey trials.

Tony Sansone III [00:39:57] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there was the, the, the other one in recent, you know, past 20 years where they wanted to put a sticker on. Oh, I remember that. This is just a theory.

Vance Crowe [00:40:04] Yeah. And then they were talking all about Texas school boards and things like that. Yeah. Yeah.

Tony Sansone III [00:40:08] So it's, it's really a, you know, a fascinating topic because it's just so deep and so complex. But you, I I would say, I have to tend to agree with you that there, this federal as, and even Ted Cruz, you know, who's sort of unabashedly conservative, and I would not say a big supporter of the cannabis industry. He said, you know, this is why we have a federalist system. The people of Colorado, you know, want to have recreational cannabis or medical cannabis. They shouldn't, you know, that's up to them.

Vance Crowe [00:40:38] And it's a beautiful thing. 'cause you do get to see, is it Pottersville? And if it is Pottersville, was there something they did that was different than the other one?

Tony Sansone III [00:40:46] That's incredibly interesting because it's not a, the variables in, you know, I, there's this scientist I love, his name is Carl Giberson, and he, he's a professor of physics and he also happens to be a religious believer. And he said the debate was about, he was having a debate with another guy who I really, really liked named Michael Shermer, who runs

Vance Crowe [00:41:10] Oh, yeah, yeah. Skeptics magazine. Yeah, of course.

Tony Sansone III [00:41:13] And it was less of a debate, more of a conversation. And Michael Shermer's like saying, well, I don't think theology is a real discipline. Obviously he, you know, he I'm speaking is him, obviously I'm an agnostic. And

Vance Crowe [00:41:22] You can say what Yeah,

Tony Sansone III [00:41:23] Yeah. That's what, that's what he was saying. And Verson said, well, I, he's like, I think you have to look at the discipline itself and the complexity of it. And he said, this is Verson speaking. He said, I'm a physicist. He says, I know more about my, he's like, we deal with simple problems. Doesn't seem like it. We, you know, we know more about our discipline than the chemist. The chemists know more about their discipline than the biologist. Yeah. And you may, he said, by the time you get up to the economist, they know almost nothing.

Vance Crowe [00:41:51] This is, this is, oh, I totally agree with this. A hundred percent. So

Tony Sansone III [00:41:54] That's what he was, and that's, so you're right. This potters will thing. What the implica, there's so many variables and some of 'em, and there's many that are undetectable that to draw a conclusion, you know, a causal,

Vance Crowe [00:42:08] The, the thing about religion that I did not realize until a few years ago, so I grew up Catholic. Yeah. And I actually had built a little reputation in my Sunday school or, you know, CCD as they used to call it. The, that I knew all the Bible stories. And then I got to a certain age where I was like, those Bible stories are dumb and I'm throwing 'em all out. You don't realize that whether or not there is a belief in God, in present, in, in understanding those stories or hearing those stories. It is that those stories lasted, that's thousands of years. Yeah. And, and if you, if they have made it this far, they have some meaning in them Yeah. That you can derive something out of, and maybe you bring in at the time you need it, some spiritual belief.

Tony Sansone III [00:42:54] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:42:55] But maybe you don't, the stories in and of themselves are ancient wisdom that we shouldn't forget.

Tony Sansone III [00:42:59] And it's pretty, you know, when you talk about these stories surviving over, that's, that's a remarkable achievement. And, and it's because, and if you, if you accept, if you accept evolution, you and you think that that applies to, to, to ideas as well, which I tend to think it does. Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. These, these stories

Vance Crowe [00:43:26] You're saying, just so for clarity, you're saying if you believe in evolution as genetic selection. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what brought us to being humans. You can also think of mimetic selection. Exactly. Which are the ideas. Yeah.

Tony Sansone III [00:43:37] That

Vance Crowe [00:43:37] Stood the test of time and actually probably got honed and made better and made better. I mean, whether you're talking about Christian stories Yeah. Or the, the Greek myths.

Tony Sansone III [00:43:46] Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:43:47] Which, you know, are my friend Rob Long do good, good friend Plantables on Twitter. He pointed out to me something that blew my mind about the Greek and Roman gods is that each one of the gods is an emotion. Yeah.

Tony Sansone III [00:43:59] That

Vance Crowe [00:43:59] Can inhabit you.

Tony Sansone III [00:44:01] So I have a friend and my family had a small foundation at Washington University called the, the Center for Wellbeing. And the director of that is a very well known psychiatrist, geneticist name named c Robert Cloninger, who said exactly that and uses the Greek myth in terms when try understanding patients, understanding personality. I mean, these are,

Vance Crowe [00:44:30] And you know, all of the gods had these dualities, right? Yeah. Where it could be Dion, ISIS, he's the life of the party. You wanna be around him, but he's also a drunker. Yes. And if you, if you go too far in, in any one direction, that to me is, is deeply important just to, just to remember that like, just learning these stories allows you to see the world in this more complex, this incredibly complex world. It allows you to boil it down to being like, how do I handle these situations?

Tony Sansone III [00:45:01] Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And that's why it, so, I mean, when we're, I, I think that those, these stories are incredibly important. And you, when you look back and, and there's this, there's a major focus now in rightly so on STEM fields, you know, in the focus on,

Vance Crowe [00:45:25] On

Tony Sansone III [00:45:25] Dedicated to the STEM fields, right? I have to say someone who has a liberal arts education, you, the, the wisdom that I, that I garnered from, you know, from the, from the Christian Bible, from the Greek myth, you know, from gha. It's, I mean, if you look at Faust, not to sound like a total nerd here, but the, the story of selling your soul in exchange for knowledge and power, you know, well, I you wanna talk about timeless, you know, it almost gives me chills. That's a story that applies, you know, that everyone can relate to.

Vance Crowe [00:46:04] Well, a a hundred percent. Right? Like, and, and what are you willing to give up? What is a good sacrifice to make? Right. Because the people that get the furthest in life have the most discipline, discipline is about making sacrifices at for one period of time in order to achieve something larger. But you can make a sacrifice that makes none of it worthwhile. Right. Like, you, you go too far in one direction and Faust being like, yeah, I'll give up my soul. What's the point of that in order to have these other things that I wanted.

Tony Sansone III [00:46:34] You familiar with a documentary called The Day After Trinity?

Vance Crowe [00:46:37] No.

Tony Sansone III [00:46:38] Okay. I highly recommend it. It was on, I think you could find it on YouTube. We'll

Vance Crowe [00:46:41] Put it in the show notes. In the, in the links.

Tony Sansone III [00:46:43] Yeah. Okay. And it was on PBS years ago, and it's about the Manhattan Project and, and Op Oppenheimer specifically, and theirs, the famous physicist Freeman Dyson, Princeton Institute for Advanced Study. I think he's still, he's in his nineties now. He's talks about, and it's right in the middle of the documentary when he is talking about the Manhattan Project. And he said, Oppenheimer made a Faustian bargain. You know, there's no doubt he, he was given by general, I think it was General Groves, graves or Groves, gave him unlimited resources to do physics on the grandest scale. And that's what he did. And he said, there's no doubt about it. 'cause you know, if the famous speech that Oppenheimer gave after the, the

Vance Crowe [00:47:33] Iron shiva,

Tony Sansone III [00:47:34] Yes, yes. I am death, I, I am become death. You know, there's sort of this awareness of that, regardless of what you think, you know, if there was justified or not. I think that Oppenheimer said, once this ball kind of started rolling, and I was, you know, I was get, I'm paraphrasing here. I was given, you know, this, these res unlimited resources by the United States government to do physics on the grandest scale. It was too much.

Vance Crowe [00:48:00] And, and if you think about that deal in your own life, and imagine, so I have always, one of the things that I learned along my path was it is nearly impossible to say, this is what I want to become when I grow up. Yeah. But it is a lot safer to say, this is a question that I am interested in answering. And that question could be, am I capable of doing X? Am I capable of becoming a marathon runner? Am I smart enough to get into this school that I want? Whatever that is. But you, the, the way that you find your life worth living is you have questions that if you discover the answer to them, it's gonna make a difference somewhere, you know, dis And, and so maybe I, or I don't know, like not everyone is capable of thinking about how do I discover the secrets of nuclear fusion? Yes. But if you pursue any question that you have so deeply, are you making a Faustian deal? If you pursue nothing, you, you'll get nowhere. If you, what do you think?

Tony Sansone III [00:48:57] I'll give you an exam. This is something that I, I tend to think, I try to think very deeply about because these situations will come up in all of our lives. I gen genuinely. If

Vance Crowe [00:49:08] You're doing anything that matters at all Yeah. It will come up. Yeah.

Tony Sansone III [00:49:12] And, and this is the funny thing. It doesn't, it's not this clear, clear example where me, Metis is standing at your door with the contract to sell you. It's something small and, and it builds. For me, I thought a lot about it. 'cause I'm in the cannabis industry now. I'm pretty, I, you know, and this is something I thought deeply about. I don't have any issue with it. What I have an issue. And the investments

Vance Crowe [00:49:39] Me meaning that you don't have an issue moral, you don't think it's gonna be a, a you're not creating pottersville to sit on your own No mountain of money.

Tony Sansone III [00:49:46] And I think the research gen genuinely reflects that this is not, you know, the biggest argument against it is the gateway drug

Vance Crowe [00:49:53] Theory.

Tony Sansone III [00:49:54] I, I don't, from everything I've seen, it does not hold water. Again, take it with a grain of salt. I'm acco I have an economic interest.

Vance Crowe [00:50:03] So, you know, I am I well schooled in the game of doing what ifs

Tony Sansone III [00:50:09] Because

Vance Crowe [00:50:09] I, I represented a biotech company and would go out and talk about GMOs. And you can only say what, what, we have evidence that it does this. Exactly. And we have evidence that it kind of doesn't do that. But we don't know that. No. Right. And so in, in the biotech world, they would be like, well, you don't know that it doesn't cause autism, so maybe we shouldn't eat GMOs. You know, you could look at something like cannabis and say, well, if we put it on a grand national scale, maybe it causes infertility. And you have a whole bunch of people that have lost their access to have children because of that. Let's, let's imagine a scenario where that comes true. So then do you feel bad? Sure.

Tony Sansone III [00:50:44] I think I probably would if it, I'll give you a counter example if you don't mind. Yeah, of course. So I'm a big, I love Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. I love watching from the Berkshire Hathaway, love watching the

Vance Crowe [00:50:58] Greatest marketing. They, they

Tony Sansone III [00:50:59] Are marketers.

Vance Crowe [00:51:00] They are brilliant.

Tony Sansone III [00:51:01] They really are. That if you watch their annual meeting every now over the past five years, you have people that buy, you know, I would assume buy some B shares of Berkshire Hathaway. And then they come, they're able to, to get a question. And it's always, I mean, every meeting it's about Coca-Cola and diabetes. 'cause they, Berkshire Hathaway is the, I think the largest shareholder

Vance Crowe [00:51:22] Of

Tony Sansone III [00:51:22] Coca-Cola. And I, and I genuinely, this is something I genuinely believe they what these pe oftentimes, and this is, I'm essentially paraphrasing what, what Charlie Munger, the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway said, is this, these people that come up and complain, which they're, they have every right to do. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:51:42] They're owners of the company.

Tony Sansone III [00:51:43] Yeah. What they don't do is they don't, they don't judge the, the benefits by the detriments or the detriments by the benefits rather. And sure there are people that develop type two diabetes because they're consuming too much sugar. And it could be in the form of, of Coca-Cola. Does that mean we shouldn't have Coca-Cola? Some people say yes. I don't, I think the benefits of I like drink. I don't drink regular Coca-Cola. I love Diet Coke. I love diet cherry, coca especially. I think the amount of people they employ is absolutely fabulous. And this is something I've thought people do. Do I think it's healthy that there are people that drink eight Coca-Cola cans of Coca-Cola a day? No, I think it's a travesty. But

Vance Crowe [00:52:40] You wouldn't make it so nobody else can, has have Coca-Cola. Right. So, so, you know, this is a very libertarian concept of saying, Hey, I wanna make it available to anybody that wants to people that are irresponsible. That's on them, not the company. I

Tony Sansone III [00:52:53] Don't even know that, that's what I'm saying. Okay. I'm saying that there are pe that there are people, and I've heard this, that genuinely say we shouldn't have these types of products and they shouldn't be made. You know, they'll go to that extreme. Now, I think there's very few people that say, but I've, I've met them that will say that, that they shouldn't be able to advertise or that, you know, you shouldn't be able to consume these products if you're under

Vance Crowe [00:53:17] 18. Shouldn't be able to sponsor the high schools Yeah. Football scoreboard. Right.

Tony Sansone III [00:53:24] In

Vance Crowe [00:53:24] Order to be able to have a contract to sell Coca-Cola in the schools.

Tony Sansone III [00:53:28] I, I just, I, I simply don't, and this is why I think things are much simpler in cannabis. I would have a real problem if, and, and this whole time we've sort of been focused, I mean there's been this sort of implicit focus on cannabis in general and sort of recreational cannabis. I have no doubt. And especially with the opioid crisis, that medical cannabis has incredible benefits for people from, from a pain management perspective. But let's say we're talking about recreational cannabis. I am not a died in the world. Libertarian who thinks that, you know, there should be marketing to

Vance Crowe [00:54:07] Yeah. Should you be able to sell it at a high school basketball game concession stand.

Tony Sansone III [00:54:11] Yeah. I mean, I'm not, you know, I, I think I, you know, and listen, I could have that debate with other libertarians, but I think, you know, like anything, it's, there are shades of gray. I think it's reasonable, you know, to say that there shouldn't be regulations on this industry. And I absolutely believe that.

Vance Crowe [00:54:27] Yeah. You know, the thing about libertarians that is an interesting concept is that many of them come at it almost like the people that are on the left, that, that are like, let's just go to the absolute extreme. Let's just do a hundred percent socialism. Sure. Well, the people in the libertarian system are like, we should just tear everything down and then we'll build from scratch. Instead of saying, probably the best way to do it is to take the most stable society and then just take off one rule. Yeah. And if it's better, then we'll take off another rule. Yeah. And, and allow as many of these little incubators that we were talking about before these cities or states Yeah. To try things and as they figured out which laws to take off, let's do that too. Yeah.

Tony Sansone III [00:55:06] It's a hard, I mean, you know, this, we've, I know this in my own personal experience, so if you give me something or if I'm used to something and you take it away from me, I am not going to be happy.

Vance Crowe [00:55:19] Oh, yeah. Loss aversion is way, way, way more intense. I, I, I agree. So one of the things I wanted to return to Yeah. Was you're in the grow room. Yeah. Right? And, and you've got the little baby plants, and then you've got the big plants, but there are a bunch of people roaming around there. Yeah. Who all works in cannabis, because if you, if one of my listeners has an 18-year-old kid that says, I'm going out to Colorado to start my career in cannabis, are they, are they nuts? Are they hippies? Are they, is there work out there that's worthwhile for them to be doing? Oh,

Tony Sansone III [00:55:54] Absolutely.

Vance Crowe [00:55:55] So let's hear that.

Tony Sansone III [00:55:56] So if you wanna be in the cannabis industry, I give very different advice to someone that wants to go work in the cannabis industry versus someone that wants to invest in it. If you wanna go work in it, there is a plethora of opportunities available for sophisticated and highly intelligent people that, and this is, this gets into my investment philosophy. I look at industries that other people, for whatever reason, may have stepped away from, are not interested in that. There may be something of a stain on it that doesn't violate my own personal morals that appeals to me. And I have no doubt in cannabis, it's almost hard to believe this now because it's become, just in the past couple years, I've never really seen, I was talking about this with some professors of mine from, from business school, the transformation of an industry in just a couple years from non-mainstream to mainstream. There are a plethora of opportunities for highly Sufi for people. Well, I mean, whether you're blue collar, white collar, you know, you work in law, you have agricultural experience, there are a plethora of opportunities. Like

Vance Crowe [00:57:20] What

Tony Sansone III [00:57:21] If you wanted to work in a, if you just wanna learn about the industry and you wanna work in a growth facility and see how cannabis, when I say growth facility, I'm talking about a cultivation facility. There are one

Vance Crowe [00:57:33] Of those concrete buildings out in Las Vegas. And so you could show up there and fill out an online application. Sure. And then what type of work would you be doing?

Tony Sansone III [00:57:41] You could do trimming where meaning

Vance Crowe [00:57:43] There's flour on there and you're clipping it off and making it so people have something to smoke.

Tony Sansone III [00:57:47] You could, if you, let's say you're an engineer or software developer, there are, as this industry goes mainstream, and you know, like anything, it's understanding what your consumers want. Building applications or, you know, building on data collection, you know, to understand as much about what your consumers want. Certainly in marketing, I mean, that's really the future.

Vance Crowe [00:58:14] Oh, that's, I wouldn't even have thought about that, about how much it is marketing, because you're buying a green flower and somebody's gotta tell you, this is what it tastes like. This is what it smells like. This is what it's gonna do to you psychologically. This is how healthy it is or not healthy. Yeah. That's, that's really interesting. Come to this store.

Tony Sansone III [00:58:32] Exactly. And the biggest, this is, this is, I'm getting inside here, but, and, but I think it'll be valuable, is the retail component of cannabis is getting consumers in, getting them what they want and getting them out and operating that efficiently. The issue is, is that you're having people come in that aren't educated about the product. So how do you educate them while also maning maintaining operational efficiency,

Vance Crowe [00:59:05] Particularly if you're in Las Vegas and it's a tourist business. So these people don't have the thing that they're just looking for the

Tony Sansone III [00:59:11] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:59:12] You know, whatever the varieties are.

Tony Sansone III [00:59:14] That's so, and you're in it, you're in part even more insight here is this is very, this industry industry, because of the state by state regulations, because it's not legal at the federal level, it's very fragmented. And you can go to certain places like the Bay Area where you see incredible operational efficiency versus newer markets where there's, you know, less efficiency and, and then also back to complexity. What may work in the Bay Area doesn't necessarily translate to Illinois or Massachusetts or,

Vance Crowe [00:59:53] So you that, that's interesting. 'cause I would, is making the comparison to something like McDonald's, right. Where McDonald's gets to get out ahead. One, because they have food that people enjoy eating, but then two, their operating model is so efficient, they can get people in and out super, super fast.

Tony Sansone III [01:00:09] I'm smiling here because this is something I've talked with a very, very, very successful company about, and they brought up McDonald's and they have an interesting, so I'll give you some, I'll give you some idea here. I think the last I looked, and I could be wrong, but the average dispensary does something like 3.7 million a year and top line revenue, 3.7 to 4 million out of

Vance Crowe [01:00:38] Man, they must have jacked up retail the space costs of Las Vegas insanely well, this

Tony Sansone III [01:00:43] Is across the country. The, there's a, there's a company I know of that has a retail location that does over 20 million in top line revenue out of a thousand square feet. Is

Vance Crowe [01:00:52] That like the bass pro of, of

Tony Sansone III [01:00:55] Cannabis? It's pretty remark. And what they've done is they are, without going into too much detail, they're able to, they've got a system to where they're a mix of McDonald's and the Apple store, apple stores all upsell. McDonald's is no upsell. It's like,

Vance Crowe [01:01:14] Okay,

Tony Sansone III [01:01:15] You want a number two, great. Get you number two out the door. Volume, volume, volume.

Vance Crowe [01:01:19] Right.

Tony Sansone III [01:01:19] Apple stores all, you know, I think they have the highest sales per square foot. They're like 6,000. Do you know, when we talk about companies that have reported it, this company's a little bit of a mix and they have cues for, you know, one group that knows exactly what they want and the other, the, and they've got a technological advantage here that, that, that allows 'em to kind of separate their customers.

Vance Crowe [01:01:42] Really? Yeah, because you, in Las Vegas, you have to show up and you have to give 'em your idea. This

Tony Sansone III [01:01:45] Company isn't in Las Vegas. Oh,

Vance Crowe [01:01:47] Well there's a and that's like a weird thing. Right. So the the, and there's probably a whole bunch of business around that is in Las Vegas because you have to tell them who you are and Sure. And put it all down. There's people that are taking those photos and, and running the background check on the, I mean it's, I don't even, I totally understand. I'm really fascinated by this idea of how many people there are to work in it. Because, you know, coming from agriculture, there are breeders and the breeding is real serious Yeah. In cannabis. Because whoever can find one that grows not just higher yields Yeah. But gives you the psychotropic effects that you actually want. So is it, is it more calming? Is it gonna rattle, is it gonna bring you up? Is he gonna do all these things? So this is breeding. And then you've got, I don't know, experienced people that can taste the terroir of the land and how this all, but then you also have, you were talking about computer scientists to do web development, but also I would imagine that's gonna go in with breeding and supply chain. Absolutely. And all of this, this is, it really is adding a whole new branch to the economy. Yeah.

Tony Sansone III [01:02:53] Yeah. It's pretty remarkable. And it's, you know, I I, I think if you wanna build a career or you want to get an industry where you have an opportunity to start at the ground, really kind of the ground floor, it's, it's great industry to start. Because I believe that the industry itself has staying power. Is it a

Vance Crowe [01:03:14] Wholesome industry? I mean, if, if somebody found out their kid went to two years of technical college to get some, you know, automated greenhouse education, they go out to wherever. Is is legal to grow? Are they hanging around with a bunch of bums?

Tony Sansone III [01:03:28] You, I I, and I can say there's wholeheartedly, I've, some of the people I've worked with in cannabis are the best people I've ever met. Not just in terms of from a professional experience, which they, they have been, but I'm talking about on a personal level, is honest now it's anecdotal evidence. Take it for what it's worth. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:03:47] Because there's gotta be bums. Right? Of course. Of course. There's guys that are showing up with their man buns on that are stoned all day long and, and aren't doing anything other than playing video games when they get done trimming all day. This

Tony Sansone III [01:03:58] Is the interesting

Vance Crowe [01:03:59] Thing

Tony Sansone III [01:04:00] Is that if your goal is to sit around and you say, I I wanna get into the cannabis industry so I can smoke marijuana and smoke cannabis all day, you know, and have fun. It is not the industry for you. You shouldn't, because it's the people that are going to succeed in this are the ones that have discipline that take it seriously and put their heart and soul into it.

Vance Crowe [01:04:22] There you go. Yeah,

Tony Sansone III [01:04:23] There

Vance Crowe [01:04:24] You go. That's,

Tony Sansone III [01:04:25] That's not any profound wisdom. I think that's anything. If you really wanna succeed, you gotta work really, really hard.

Vance Crowe [01:04:32] And the discipline part going back, 'cause we didn't actually finish the, the story of you held back, you waited and then people hit the wall. Yeah. And you were there to, to buy up their, their, well

Tony Sansone III [01:04:46] It was more of that anything, it was just managing cost. We didn't incur those costs by having a full harvest and operating. And I have to, that's the difference, was the difference for us.

Vance Crowe [01:05:00] How long did you wait before you started growing? Gosh, let

Tony Sansone III [01:05:02] Me think about this. You wanna know. So we sold in August, we sold the entire facility in August of 2018. We had not yet had our full harvest, our first full harvest. It's in any really successful investor. Again, I'm not taking any credit for this. This is, you know, rather be lucky than Right. But, you know, I I like to think that there was some effort that we put into this.

Vance Crowe [01:05:29] I mean, there's no doubt because you are there with, with us and I think maybe 20% of the greenhouse was full. Yeah. And I know even myself, I was a little bit like, ah, I wanted to see the entire thing filled with cannabis. And you were like, we're growing this right here. We're we're doing practice runs. Yeah. We're getting better at drying, we're doing. And you didn't have, you had, you had a few people around. There were busy bees around there, but it wasn't loaded down with people sitting on their phones waiting for something to do.

Tony Sansone III [01:05:56] Yeah. And it was, and I'll, I'll step back. The, the, the reason for this, for our investment in, in this industry was that the worst case scenario, we thought that there were moats around these licenses. The license for a dispensary, for a, for a grow, for processing, especially in a, in a city like Las Vegas and a state like Nevada. And when I say mode, I'm talking about a competitive advantage in that there would be value in those licenses in and of themselves. And if you had a fully built facility and the opportunity came where someone wanted to buy it, that you, that there would be a value proposition there and that you would have a significant return on investment. I think that ultimately turned out to be true. I, there are states where,

Vance Crowe [01:06:49] What did Mr. Harden end up buying then? Because you hadn't had a full harvest. So you had the license and you had the facility.

Tony Sansone III [01:06:56] The facility, the facility was really the license, but ultimately the facility and the ability to produce high grade, high quality cannabis out of that facility was what they bought. And I, you know, I think it was a, it was a good investment for them because I think that what they took was what would be a linear investment for us. And it turned out to be an exponential, you know, they could, through their operational efficiencies and also scale could make that an exponential, you know, investment. Because ultimately the co consolidation that's happened in the, in the past three years is unprecedented. And I, I don't say that. I mean, I mean that literally is unprecedented. I don't know, I've talked about this with professional economists and people that have, you know, professors of business at, at elite universities who've said, you know, I can't think of other examples where you've seen an industry, and this is, I don't think it's specific to cannabis. I think we're in a world now where things happen much faster and efficiency is reaching, efficiency is getting easier. I mean, if you think about this, there's, oh

Vance Crowe [01:08:11] Man, that sounds counterintuitive reaching efficiency because to me it would've seemed like the low hanging fruit is done. You know, the guy that, let's just take it to agriculture. Yeah. The guy that was able to build a better diesel engine. Those days are over because you're not trying to build a better diesel engine. They're trying to build GPS guided, you know, precis. I, I

Tony Sansone III [01:08:30] Think we're saying the same thing in, in that, that that applies their technological expertise now applies to this in and the way we're all progressing and the way things progress in general, it's just much, much faster.

Vance Crowe [01:08:43] That's true.

Tony Sansone III [01:08:44] Yeah. And now I think that there, because the industry itself, because of the legal, there's more room for the, you know, for technological advances and discoveries in, in cannabis.

Vance Crowe [01:08:56] And you won't have one monolith that comes in and says, all right, now we're producing just for commodity. By having state by state, you get a bunch of competition. So that brings me to a question about St. Louis, Missouri, but it's actually a approachable to any state that, that you're looking at. Yeah, so Missouri is now medical state and starting, I think, what is it, in the beginning of January? Yeah. It's legal in the state of Illinois recreationally, correct?

Tony Sansone III [01:09:25] I think so, yeah. And

Vance Crowe [01:09:26] So what is going on right now? Who is vying for what position? What, what are they jockeying for? How does this, how, how is this gonna play out in the state of Missouri?

Tony Sansone III [01:09:34] Well, I, you know, right now there's applications are being, you know, people are going to apply for applications for cultivation, processing dispensary, you know, medical cannabis operators licenses. And that'll happen, I think the deadlines in the middle of August. And so it's coming up. And then there will be a process by where, you know, the state determines who are viable candidates, candidates to start growing or I'm to start growing. To start

Vance Crowe [01:10:06] Candidates is a good name. Exactly. I like that. The candidates

Tony Sansone III [01:10:10] Who will be viable candidates to, to be operators in the industry and caregivers and, and you. And then they'll, they'll make their decisions and then they'll be,

Vance Crowe [01:10:21] Do you see the same thing going on where they'll be potential for the people that drove the car too fast or ran the engine too hot to slam into the wall?

Tony Sansone III [01:10:29] Yeah, I think so. I think that, yeah, I think that's absolutely possible.

Vance Crowe [01:10:35] Who should people be keeping their eye on? What are, what are the or or what are the opportunities really for somebody if they're serious, they're disciplined, they, they want to get in on what's gonna happen in this state. Where, where would you suggest they look?

Tony Sansone III [01:10:47] I think that there's a ton of opportunity on the picks and shovels side of this, of this industry because I think that as the industry progresses outside of the state of Missouri and it, as it becomes more efficient that trying to run a mom and pop shop in with limited capital in, in the state or anywhere, I think it's gonna be incredibly difficult. I think

Vance Crowe [01:11:21] As you're talking, I'm thinking about the efficiencies that are gonna need to happen with just having clean facilities. Yeah.

Tony Sansone III [01:11:27] That

Vance Crowe [01:11:27] Don't get, you know, if you start growing in Missouri, you do have a mites problem. Yes. You, you can have rusts and different types of fungus. I'm wondering if there'll be farmers or people that were in the swine industry or the poultry industry that'll start saying, I know how to keep a facility clean and I don't know necessarily how to grow cannabis, but I can bring this expertise to the table in a way that maybe hasn't been brought yet.

Tony Sansone III [01:11:52] It's, it's pretty interesting to think about, and this is what's so funny about, and I think with John Kenneth Alpr, who's who said this, that there are two types of forecasters, those who don't know and those who don't know, they don't know. And this, I've seen the way things play out on a state by state basis in this industry. You just in general, it's just remarkable. You just, I mean, it's the future is the variables that play and the complexity of everything. Now I genuine, you know, the future's unknowable and I think now that doesn't mean you don't do any planning. I mean, I think collecting as much information, as much data as you can, but to say that this is going to be the same as industry X is a, for anyone, is a really, really dangerous assumption. Yeah. You're missing the

Vance Crowe [01:12:42] Opportunity to look at it for what it really is and then be able to make smart decisions.

Tony Sansone III [01:12:46] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:12:47] So you travel all the time. Yeah. You said you got a partner down in Texas. Yeah. You were just doing this operation out in Las Vegas. If you didn't have family in St. Louis, would this city be a good place to be doing business or no?

Tony Sansone III [01:13:02] I, I love the city. I think it's a, I think it's a fabulous city. I I think there's a,

Vance Crowe [01:13:10] I I wasn't sure what you were gonna say there.

Tony Sansone III [01:13:12] Yeah, yeah. No, I think, you know, I went to, I went to business school here. I went to Wash Oland, Washington University and had a phenomenal experience. I, I tend to think that this is a, that there's, that this is a great city and that there's, you know, and this is, this is my personality in, in general is that the, and I I take this as a comp. My professor said something to me, my accounting professor Ron King at, at Olin, and I took this, he goes, you strike me as the person, as the type of person who doesn't care what anybody thinks. Oh,

Vance Crowe [01:13:52] I think that's a hundred percent true.

Tony Sansone III [01:13:53] And I, you know, I I tend to,

Vance Crowe [01:13:56] I could have told you that. Thanks. That might have been in my introduction.

Tony Sansone III [01:14:00] And I, I, I take that as a compliment because it's, you know, the, and we both, we've, we've talked about that we've both love the book Zero to one.

Vance Crowe [01:14:11] Oh yeah. Peter Teel, Peter

Tony Sansone III [01:14:12] Teel. And there are things I agree with about, I agree with a lot of what Peter Thiel said, and there are things I don't agree with, but there's something he said I, I found fascinating is that if you look at people MBA and, and I got my MBA recently, the, a lot of them, especially, you know, he brought up Harvard, the impulse is to jump into the right, into the hot sector at exactly the wrong time.

Vance Crowe [01:14:39] Right.

Tony Sansone III [01:14:40] In 2000 was all tech in oh seven, it was all real estate private equity. And, and I think, I think you can extrapolate that on, on a wider basis is that that impulse to be, to do what everyone else is doing is incredibly, and I feel it.

Vance Crowe [01:14:59] Yeah. You go to where the wave Yeah.

Tony Sansone III [01:15:00] Is

Vance Crowe [01:15:01] Going to be not where the wave is right now. Because if you go to where the wave is right now, it's gonna crash over. You won't even get there in time.

Tony Sansone III [01:15:06] Yeah. And it's, that's a, it's a powerful bol. So I'm not, I, listen, I've been guilty, guilty of relenting to it myself, but I think I try to do a pretty good job of, of backing off of that. And also I'm just weird. So it makes it a little bit easier to, to just be different if you're unnatural weirdo. But that I, that's why I think, you know, there's emphasis on, you know, the startup model. I mean, startups are, are great, but if you look at the success rate of, of a lot of 'em, it's not that. Right.

Vance Crowe [01:15:38] Yeah.

Tony Sansone III [01:15:40] And, and ultimately, you know, I think people should do, you know, what they're, what they're passionate about. I, I know that sounds sort of trite and glib and, and I like the, and this is a long way of me saying that I like the Midwest. I love St. Louis, I love the work ethic here. And I think that there's an untapped potential here. I think there are some significant changes that have to be made. I think that this is, and you know, I'll just be very direct here. I think that the impulse for a lot of people is to try to, if you end up trying to be the Silicon Valley, the, the Midwest, you end up being the nothing of nowhere.

Vance Crowe [01:16:27] Right. You, if you follow the model where you say, we're gonna try and be tech, tech tech Yeah.

Tony Sansone III [01:16:32] Just

Vance Crowe [01:16:32] Like Silicon Valley, you're missing the fact that you're not Silicon Valley.

Tony Sansone III [01:16:35] Right. And, and there's also things that St. Louis has that

Vance Crowe [01:16:41] The largest, most important navigable waterway Right. On the planet Yeah. Runs right past our front door.

Tony Sansone III [01:16:47] Yeah. And exactly. And there are cities have specific resources that make them viable for certain things and are, you know, do I think the people should say, I'm gonna lo you know, relocate St. Louis to build the next great social media app. I mean, no, I don't think, I think there's, and listen, this is not an area of expertise for what,

Vance Crowe [01:17:10] What is the area that you think we do have? This particularly

Tony Sansone III [01:17:13] Sounds like life sciences. Oh

Vance Crowe [01:17:14] Yeah.

Tony Sansone III [01:17:15] Ag,

Vance Crowe [01:17:15] You

Tony Sansone III [01:17:15] Know, ag life sciences, it's pretty, it's pretty compelling.

Vance Crowe [01:17:20] The, the plant. So that's a great, so there's that statistic of like, we have more plant biologists per capita here than anywhere else in the world. But even if you didn't have that, the density of young people Yeah.

Tony Sansone III [01:17:31] That

Vance Crowe [01:17:32] Have just finished graduate level programs Yeah. That are now capable of doing breeding on a scale that was literally unimaginable just a few years ago. Yeah. You have a whole bunch of them here. Yeah.

Tony Sansone III [01:17:44] The

Vance Crowe [01:17:45] Companies just changed over, it went from being Monsanto to being Bear. Yeah. There's a whole bunch of people that said, you know what, I thought I knew the landscape when it was Monsanto. I don't know what it's gonna be with Bear. I'm gonna try my own thing. And so there is a huge number of people at the exact same moment that cannabis is gonna come online. I, I think it's gonna be, I think it's, it has the potential to be enormous in India.

Tony Sansone III [01:18:08] Yeah. I think there's an incredible opportunity there. Will it shake out? I don't know. You know, there's a, a ton of different factors, but I, I think there's, there's absolutely opportunity there.

Vance Crowe [01:18:19] So what, what, what are you up to now? Where are you spending most of your time?

Tony Sansone III [01:18:24] I'm, I'm all, I'm all over the place. I spend a lot of time here, St. Louis, Missouri. I spend time out in Nevada. I spend a ton of time out in California.

Vance Crowe [01:18:35] Where in California.

Tony Sansone III [01:18:36] I've been in la, San Diego Bay area. It's a ton of time in Colorado, you know, Denver, Colorado Springs, and you know, be a lot more travel. I spent some time in Hawaii recently doing some consulting stuff out there. So

Vance Crowe [01:18:54] Consulting on cannabis. Cannabis

Tony Sansone III [01:18:56] Business, cannabis. Yeah. Most. So the, the vast majority of what I'm doing now, just from in terms of work is, is cannabis. It's essentially my sole focus. And that's, I think for me, and I was talking about this with someone with a mentor of mine that, you know, I was like, well, maybe this industry, you know, this industry's got some inefficiencies. And he kind of gently suggested that, you know, there's not a ton. I mean, there, there's some people, and I'm drawn to these people that have, you know, can apply their knowledge and intelligence to a bunch of different industries and be really successful. I'm not as smart as, and I think for most people it makes sense to kind of specialize. And I'm realizing that more and more. I would love to be, you know, a Charlie Munger or a, you know, Howard Marks or you know, one of these people that can look at a bunch of different industries and say, okay, this works here. It's just,

Vance Crowe [01:19:55] Well, I mean, you have, you have clearly established that you were able to take a certain pile of money and turn it into a larger pile of money by doing this if, and that is in part with you figuring out who else do I need to have at the table? Yeah. Yeah. So this then maybe is a, is a great segue to say if people that have heard this have said, Tony Sansone III is the kind of guy that I enjoy talking with or hearing about. Where can people find you to, to talk with you more? Hmm. I guess you could find me on Twitter, Tony Sanon three. Yeah. Yeah. So you very, very rarely do stuff. But I gotta say, if, if something I put out there, gets a, gets a like from you, I'm like, oh, hey, he's out there. He's, he's normally you're running and gunning, so that's great. I'll, I'll put a link on there. Yeah. I think that we should plan to get together in a few months when things start panning out in Illinois and they're looking like they're shaping up here in Missouri and, and let's, let's have a conversation about, I would love to, what's going on in the world because it's, we marked time today and we'll figure out what things happen in the future. But in the meantime, thank you so, so much for stopping, stopping by. It's an honor. This is great. So I'm glad to see fun. Thanks. Tell your dad I said hi. I will. Thanks. Well that's it for this week's interview with Tony Sansone III. I hope you enjoyed it. Next week on the podcast, I have the good fortune of finding an attorney that does class action lawsuits. And this is a topic I am deeply interested in because while I was working at Monsanto and then later Bear, they were embroiled in a major class action lawsuit about glyphosate.

Vance Crowe [01:21:35] And while I had nothing at all to do with the court case, I have a lot of feelings about the safety of glyphosate. And so it has been absolutely bizarre to me that a giant class action lawsuit could come about and let alone huge fines, like 78 million to $2 billion could be levied against a corporation. So a friend of mine connected me with a, with an attorney that is in class action lawsuits and he has agreed to stop by the studio. We're gonna talk about things like Johnson and Johnson and the baby powder cases, how these cases come about and whatever else the attorney wants to share with me, it will be an interesting interview and it'll be one of those where I am coming in with a strong opinion, but trying to keep an open mind about what I can learn. Speaking of keeping an open mind, I'm gonna keep with the tradition of letting you know about Twitter followers or Twitter pages that I think are worth following. There's two today that I wanna mention. I've mentioned both of these individuals on the podcast before, but if you've never taken the chance to pull out your phone and follow them, this is a great time to get outta the network that you're typically in and jump into a totally different one. So the first one I wanna mention is my good friend, you've heard me mention him several times on the podcast. His name is Rob Long and he goes by Plantables. Rob and I have actually sat down to do a couple of interviews and has proven that it's really difficult to interview your friends, but if you want a taste for the intellectual rigor with which Rob brings to all of our conversations offline and, and an understanding of really out there topics that you might not ordinarily encounter.

Vance Crowe [01:23:15] So his Twitter feed is plantables and you'll find that's P-L-A-N-T-I-M-A-L-S. I'll have a link to it in the show notes. You'll find everything from geology to conversations about philosophy and every once in a while, complexity and mathematics. He is a very interesting guy and if you get to his Twitter feed and you'll like what you see, always pop into who he is following and look around their, their interesting peoples people to explore. One of the people that Rob introduced me to several years ago who has now become somebody that has really influenced my thinking on a whole bunch of different domains is a guy named Yosha Bach Yosha is an artificial intelligence researcher and he goes by plys, P-L-I-N-Z, on Twitter and he has an extraordinary Twitter page. It is very different. He's always putting out original thoughts, very, very few links. And if he does put a link out there it is so that he can comment on his perspective on it. He is very open that he is not a normie, that he has a different way of looking at the world. And I think that when you go to his page and you start flipping through some of his tweets, you'll see that this is one of those people that is a rare person that without something like social media, you might never encounter. But I am so glad that I did. There are many times in the talks that I've given over the last few years that I have referenced his work and it's really helped me think about tribal thinking and how people know what they know.

Vance Crowe [01:24:49] So those two people are definitely worth following on Twitter. That's Rob Long Als and Yoshi Blin. And I wanna give one final shout out to Farm Hats. If you have a chance and you wanna see what agriculture looks like, not from that propagandistic commercial point of view, but you wanna see something new and different and really how farmers live and work than I highly recommend checking out the Facebook page, farm Hats. Thank you so much, Kent Plumer for sending me that box of stuff. It was great to get. So we'll be back next week with an attorney talking about class action lawsuits. Until then, have a great day and continue to share the podcast. Thanks.